
Glass. 
Book. 



SMITHSONIAN DEPOSIT. 



FERTILIZERS 



Greensand Mar 



Xim William Goukty, Yirgika, 



'■pff 






T 



Dr. C. A^. GMIEENE 

HARRISBURG, PA.. 

JANUARY, 1884. 




A portion of these pages was read as an essay before the Pennsylvania Stai 
Itural Association, at their annual meeting, held in the Senate Chamber, Jann 
!84, by its author, who has for forty years been connected with agricultural 
me of which are the Cincinnati Ohio Horticultural from 1858 to 1868.. 1 
.ster, Pa., Agricultural Society, for two years, and the Berks County Agricul 
ety for the same length of time. 



FERTILIZERS. 



The following advertisement appeared in the Harrisburg 2'e.tetjrcqjh:--"¥otisi[ Bones. 
By request, Dr. C. A. Greene will lecture on Wednesday evening, August 29th, 1883, in 
the Capitol Building in the Hall of the Representatives on Fertilizers in general and 
the wonderful deposits of greensand marl in King William county, Virginia, in particu- 
lar, and will display at the lecture a large quantity of antediluvian bones of quadrupeds, 
bipeds, fishes, reptiles, together with shells found in this ancient cemetery." 
The Harrisburg Patriot of August 30th contained the following editorial : 
"The Science of Geology. — Dk. Gbeene's Lectuke on the Mabl oe Vieginia. — 
The lecture of Dr. C. A. Greene, in the house of representatives last evening, is re- 
garded as one of the finest things ever heard there. There were many members of 
the assembly present, and at the close the general opinion among them was that the 
. lecture was very perfect in the science of geology and very instructive. The illus- 
trations were excellent, consisting of a fine collection of shark's teeth, the bones of 
fish and of extinct animals. Dr. Greene spoke at length on the marl deposits of Vir- 
ginia and of their great importance to the uses of agriculture. He gave a descrip- 
tion of the Pamunkey river country, in King William county, where the mass of the 
marl deposit is found, and where the farming communities have known its great value 
for many years. The members extended hearty congratulations to Dr. Greene at the 
close, expressing a wish for him to give them another lecture soon again, and the 
audience, at the instance of Senator Sill, gave him a unanimous vote of thanks. Dr. 
Greene thinks of giving the public the benefit of the lecture in pamphlet form." Act- 
ing President Mylin, Senator from Lancaster, and a farmer of no mean experience, in- 
troduced Dr. Greene to the members. 

Apology Xo. 1. 

Before perusing these pages, just know that they were made up in scraps, or portions 
from time to time by the author amidst an excessive amount of work as a physician, 
and that no effort has been made to especially arrange the subjects, or to write the 
communications in the best English. The prime object is to bring such an array of 
statistics before the reader as to interest him in the (to be) marvelous developement of 
the marl in King William county, Virginia. 

Unfair Legislation. 

It is one of those unfortunate facts, which is self-evident to anyone, that notwith- 
standing the farmers of the United States are the bone and sinew, and with their 
families represent 20,000,000 of inhabitants, and really could, if they wished, control 
the political issues of the country. Yet as a class they have been less represented in 
legislative acts than any other body of men, that is there are fewer laws made for their 
interest, and the Object of these few lines upon the subject is to attract the eye of the 
readers of this pamphlet, and let them so manage all their political movements that 
they shall have every assistance and protection that belongs to them, and has been 
wrongfully withheld. This is only a general declaration but I could give hundreds of 
specific cases to prove my assertion if necessary. The lack of any State, or the United 
States, acting by proper legislation to prevent the enormous destruction of crops by 
insects is one startling case to the point. 

Commissioner of Agiiciiltiire. 

As cultivating lands is one of the most important avocations, and as the well-being 
and health of mankind to a certain extent depends upon the good qualities of vegeta- 
bles, fruit, &c., it is certainly necessary that every state should have its seperate com- 
missioner of agriculture and its own experimental college, and once every year all the 
commissioners should meet together for mutual advantage and interchange of opinions. 
And, as "Wisdom cometh to the learned man by opportunity of leisure," such men 
should be selected for the positions as have had the fitting time to prepare themselves 
for the calling. 



Greensand Marl— Some Intei-esting Facts Concerning the Great 

Fertilizer. 

Dr. 0. A. Greene of this city in his recent lecture before the members of the legis- 
lature gave a very interesting account of his investigation of fertilizers and especially 
of the greensand marl of King William county, Virginia. We have been permitted to 
make an abstract of Dr. Greene's very instructive lecture which is here laid before the 
readers of the Patriot. 

Nearly four hundred years ago when Columbus first landed on the soil of North 
America, he found here a race of people to whom he gave the misnomer of Indians, 
wrongfully believing that he had landed in a portion of India. The various tribes 
that were scattered over our vast continent were all uncivilized alike and lived a no- 
madic life, erecting their wigwams, and temporarily locating their villages where game 
and fishes were most abundant. The gardens were small and the variety of vegetables 
they raised was very meagre. Maize was grown by all of them and from the above 
time to the first settlements of Virginia and to the landing of the Pilgrims in 1620 very 
little progress was made in the science of agriculture. When the lands became im- 
poverished they were abandoned. Artificial fertilizers were comparatively unknown 
until the commencement of this century. During the last two hundred years the lands in 
the older states of our Union have been absolutely worked out in many places, especially 
Virginia, and the necessity for returning to the land the substances which had been ex- 
tracted has been well understood, and for years the great study has been just to know what 
is deficient in the ground and how it can be most readily and cheaply returned ; and 
the demand for fertilizers has wonderfully increased since 1860 until now there are 
hundreds of rich firms in different portions of the states, whose whole occupation is 
the manufacture of manures. As the barn yard excretions were found insufficient in 
quantity, the making of artificial manure was obligatory and the fitting time has ar- 
rived in the natural course of human events, that the farmer who knowing the above 
facts rejects the aid of science, is the greatest enemy to himself. Every fact or sta- 
tistic that the husbandman learns in along life can be printed in a few pages and thence 
transmitted to posterity, and the information gained is a bundle of scieniific facts. The 
time must soon come when the farmer will analyze the soils on different portions of 
his lands, and supply the deficencies with as much ease and certainty as an analysis of 
a specimen of gold will show its worth, and it is a singular and remarkable provision of 
nature that the needs of mankind are supplied in the ratio of their requirements. When 
the wood was becoming scarce in the vicinity of our large towns and cities in colonial 
times, then Franklin and Charles Thompson (or the Count of Rumford), both born 
within ten miles of each other, began to study to find more economical ways of using 
it, and the Franklin stove was invented, being the first one in America. The enormous 
chimneys and fire-places were greatly reduced in size, requiring very much less con- 
sumption of wood for the same amount of heat. Then when wood became still more 
expensive God in his providence directed the attention of man to the immense beds of 
anthracite coals, and in 1825 it was just being produced, while in the year 1882 the 
state of Pennsylvania alone mined 29,500.000 tons. During the last half of the last century 
the people were demanding a better light than the tallow candle and the dim whale 
oil lamp and the Argand and other burners were invented, and gas made its first public 
appearance at the coronation of Napoleon in Paris. Then in 1850, when whale oil was 
becoming scarce, and the intrepid mariner from New Bedford, Nantucket, Fall River and 
Fairhaven in Massachusetts, had in their hundreds of (two and three y^ars) cruises in the 
Atlantic and Pacific ocean absolutely depopulated the waters containing these immense 
fishes and driven the remnants of the tribe into the Arctic and Antarctic oceans , when some 
'Other illuminator became a necessity ingenious men taxed their brains for a substitute, and 
.a score of different materials and lamps were introduced. Burning fluids, phosgine, 
camphine, pimaric and resin oils, were quite common. In 1856 nineteen millions of 
gallons of burning fluid was used, made from alcohol and turpentine. As the demand 
for light still increased, Dr. Porter erected in Conshohoken, Pa., an apparatus to make 
coal oil from bituminous coal. Then other factories were put up in this state and 
Kentucky and lots of money invested, and when they were fairly under way and were 
sanguine of making large fortunes in the newly invested oil called kerosene and other 
names, some curious individual began boring into the ground in Tidioute, Warren 
county. Pa., and there found subterranean lakes of coal oil, and since that time billions 
of gallons have been consumed and thousands of wells bored, and now when millions of 
bushels of corn and wheat are demanded, where thousands would have been ample in say 
1820, and when the played-out lands naust be replenished with elements removed in the 
years of planting, and when the barnyard excretions are necessarily so limited in quantity 
and when the great study of the farmer is to know what kind of fertilizers he requires 



on his lands and how the most cheaply to bay and apply them, and when the artificial 
manures are costing from $15 to $60 a ton, he is often in a quandary to know whether to 
pay these large prices or abandon the growing of crops. Now when this question has 
become really serious, the attention of farmers of the United States is directed to nature's 
deposits of marls and we especially to-night want to call your attention to the inexhausti- 
ble beds of greensand marl in King William, Hanover and New Kent counties, Virginia, 
where over an extent of 200 square miles of territory by convulsions and changes, and up- 
heavals and destructions that only the great Creator can account for, are found millions 
and billions of tons of greensand marl composed of the remains of quadrupeds, reptiles, 
fishes, shell and the ordure of animals mixed up with other mineral matter, and vegetable 
debris containing (en masse) all the required elements to fertilize any and all impov._rished 
lands. 

This display of bones, shells, marl, rock, etc, are all from the vicinity of the Pamunkey 
river, except one specimen. I have brought the upper and lower jaws of a recent shark 
of about seven feet in length whose teeth as you see are less than three-quarters of an 
inch long, to compare to this fossil shark's tooth which is eight and a half inches long 
and five inches wide, that you may judge of the unknown monster to whom it belonged, 
may be ten thousand or a million of years ago, and to say that he must have been over one 
hundred feet in length, and this bone called the atlas, being the first of the cervical ver- 
tebrae of a huge mammoth, was taken out of a deep pit in the marl, and the whole skel- 
eton was over thirty-five feet in length. This bone weighs five and a quarter pounds 
and measures fifteen inches across the spinous processes. 

Fertilizers e 

If the reader only knew the exact number of tons of marl, j)liosphates, ground and 
barn-yard manures that are annually used in the United States he would be surprised at 
their magnitude. 

The South Carolina developments are of comparatively recent origin, and yet in 1871 
the exports of phosphates were 359.000 tons. The United States Geological Survey for 
1882 says, that $540,000 worth of marl was sold by the various companies of New Jersey, 
and that the associations of South Carolina interested in the ground fossil bones dis- 
posed of §1,147,837 worth of this antediluvian compound, and as farms and farmers 
are increasing in number in both the Northern and Southern States, the demand for 
artificial manures is constantly and steadily increasing. The number of farms in Ala- 
bama has doubled since 1865, and the increase in crops has been almost fabulous, and 
the South are raising oats and other grains and crops which heretofore they have neg- 
lected. Georgia uses over 150,000 tons of phosphates annually. One firm who manu- 
facture the phosphates use 20,000 tons annually of animal bones and dried flesh. 

Marl in New Jersey. 

Extracts from the New Jersey State Board of Agriculture for the year 1876, page 13: 
"There are $3,000,000 worth of super-phosphates made in this State every year, and 
300,000 tons of marl are annually used. Land in New Jersey is rated higher for agri- 
cultural purposes than any other State in the Union." 

"Over 1,000 square miles are underlaid with some variety of marl. The Pemberton 
Marl Company dig through 3 feet of gray marl, 11 feet of black marl, 8 feet of green 
marl and thin chocolate marl. The greensand marl has been often analyzed and 
varies in its composition: 

ANALYSIS OF IT. 

"Silica .-----..--. 38,500 

Protoxide of Iron 4,260 

Peroxide of Iron -... 20,967 

Alumina -■--:: 6,404 

Lime --------..-. i^069 

Magnesia - - - 2,136 

Potash - - . _ - 8^190 

Sulphuric Acid ..- 0,343 

Phosporic Acid --------.. 1,163 

Quartz and water -----.... 7,700 

Page 101 : "The marl has been of incalculable value to New Jersey. It, has raised 
land from the lowest to a high state of improvement. Bare sands are made to grow 
clover and then crops of corn, potatoes and wheat. Pine barrens are made into fruitful 
farms." 



Gordon's History of New Jersey says: "It would be difficult to calculate the advan- 
tages which the state has gained from its marl. It has saved some districts from depop- 
ulation." 

The book is full of similar statistics. 

William V. Conover, of Red Bank, says: "I have improved land that was so poor you 
could not raise anything on it, so it would cut two tons of hay to the acre. I have used 
marl for forty years." 

Hew Jersey's Capital — What a Harrisburger Liearned upon a Visit 

Tiiere. 

Special Correspondence of the Patriot. 

Mount Hollx, N J., Sept. 26.— "The state of New Jersey has set the state of Penn- 
sylvania a good example, which she ought to follow. This morning I spent some 
hours in examining exhibits of the soils — cereals, kinds of trees, metals, clays, marls, 
fossils, minerals and other products of this state, all excellently shown in cases and jars 
in the state house at Trenton. In a few hours you can thus become partially acquainted 
with the history of the state. A section of a cedar three feet in diameter, white and 
colored clays, for which this state is famous. There are twenty-three potteries at the 
capital. This city was made memorable as the place where George Washington by his 
strategy, courage and executive ability overcame the English army and took captive 
several thousand Hessians. The city was named from Judge William Trent, in 1719; 
then it was a little borough — now a beautiful city of nearly 61,000 inhabitants. The 
main streets are wide, rows of shade trees on each side and a very large number of first-, 
class three and four-story brick and stone houses, and then really magnificent estates of 
one to six acres, with mansions set back from 50 to 200 feet, and lawns in front full of 
tropical plants. On the site of a division fence, perhaps 200 feet long, there was noth- 
ing but scarlet sage in blossom. These estates represents $50,000 to $200,000 of valua- 
tion. The Delaware river is on one side of the city, the Raritan canal runs directly 
through it. In the spacious room in the capital set apart for the exhibits and entitled 
the Bureau of statistics, are fossil foot prints of an extinct bird whose three toed tracks 
are fifteen inches long, also fossil fishes, the tooth of a mastodon seven inches long, the 
enamel as perfect as when in the attitude of eating, perhaps a million years ago. As 
you know there is several very valuable zinc mines in the state. Specimens weighing 
500 pounds are on exhibition, also specimens of rose crystal marble from Warren county, 
kaolin, asbestos, slate and other minerals, and over 200 quart glass jars with marls from 
various portions of the state, and named from their colors, red, gray, black, chocolate, 
ash, blue and green marl, also clay and sand marls. It is found over an area of 1,200 
square miles of extent, and it has been of such decided advantage as to have raised 
worthless lands to be extremely valuable for farming purposes. The state has made 
appropriations, and the state geologist has given the subject of marls and their uses to 
farmers a very large share of his attention. This afternoon I visited the extensive 
deposits in Birmingham, five miles from Mt. Holly, the property of Mr. Judson Gaskill, 
whose father was one of the pioneers in introducing the marl to the notice of farmers. 
Here I found a bank of marl with about one thousand feet of frontage, with a rail along 
the whole course. The marl is within four to eight feet of the surface and is twenty-five 
feet in depth, overlying another variety called the "chocolate," which is not used. He is 
sending away from ten to twenty car loads a week, each car containing from ten to 
twenty tons. He sold over 1,600 tons of marl in 1882, and is increasing his sales 
every year. His father began mining and selling it in small quantities in 1818. In 
1833 it was worked on a larger scale, and in 1865 a company of wealthy men, with a 
capital of $300,000 began working it on a still larger scale. It is shoveled from the 
banks without any preparation into the cars and then sold to the farmers. Antediluvian 
remains of bones, sharks' teeth, etc., are found in it occasionally, aind sometimes twenty 
feet from the surface large blocks of wood in the shape of charcoal. The gentlemanly 
clerk of the Bureau of statistics, Mr. William J. Miley, kindly gave me any information 
he could concerning the exhibits. — C. A. Gbeene, M. D. , 

Remember. 

that there are billions of tons of the greensand marl on the banks of the Pamunkey 
river more accessible than any marl ever before known in this country. It can be 
shoveled from its banks into barges, steamboats or vessels as easily as you can shovel in 
common sand. Remember that every farmer in the United States is compelled to use 
some kind of a fertilizer to continue the procuring of his crops. Remember that this 
greensand marl can be carried by above barges and vessels hundreds of miles at from 
one to two dollars a ton, and that every ton so delivered will pay at least $1 profit to 
the company who dispose of it, and that no other manure or composit can compete with 



us in the price. That greensand marl can be delivered in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Rich- 
mond, Savannah, Ga., Wilmington, N. C, and New York city for less than $5 a ton at a 
decided profit, or anywhere else on the Atlantic coast, within 350 miles from the deposits, 
at the same price, and that one hundred barges a day can load on one of the leases, and 
that the marl in one of the leases could not be removed by one hundred barges in two 
hundred and fifty years, then you will begin to appreciate the magnitude of these ante- 
deluvian, and perhaps pre-Adamite remains of fishes, shells, reptiles, quadrupeds and 
bipeds which, millions of years ago, were enjoying themselves according to their seperate 
and especial desires, and then in some incomprehensible manner were brought together hj 
some convulsion, upheavals, or some other way, by the fiat of God, and how, to the Divino 
only known, were then slowly fossilized and disintegrated, and have been patiently awaiting 
the allotted time to arrive in the history of the world to be removed from their immense 
chamel beds and carried over the world as curiosities, and to be deposited on hundreds 
and thousands of farms to aid the sturdy yeoman in the developement of cotton, sugar, 
rice and cabbages for the benefit of the living everywhere, and when puny man in his 
insignificence looks at these marvels of nature, or artifice, he stands back aghast and 
stultified, and ceases any efforts to unravel the mystery. It has been my good fortune 
to have been for half a century a gatherer of geological, conchological and paleonto- 
logical specimens and curiosities of any and all kinds, and I have to-day a very large 
collection for a private individual, hence claim a medium right to briefly expatiate on 
these wondrous works. In 1859, finding that the streets of Cincinnati were paved with 
antideluvian fossils and that the banks of the Ohio river was composed of limestone 
full of encrinites, and trilobites and fossils innumerable, and that over a score of fresh 
water shells, some weighing pounds, were alive in its water, belonging to the class of 
unios and clasmidonta's, I went among the 250,000 people to find some of the lovers of 
nature, and was fortunate enough to come in contact with perhaps half a hundred, and 
called them together in Gundry's college, an organization was effected, and I was ap- 
pointed president and Dr. Shaler, of Covington, Kentucky, my secretary. This was 
the second National Historical Society of Cincinnati, Ohio. The first had only an 
ephemeral existence. One of my officers. Prof. Anthony, was soon after taken to Cam- 
bridge by Prof. Agassiz, and was for years, until his death, the principal conchologist to 
the great museum . My secretary, Prof. Shaler, took Prof. Agassiz's place at his death. 

Marl, or Glaiiconite. 

My attention was first called to the above substance in 1853, when I visited the 
marl beds of New Jersey and soon after I had the pleasure of lecturing on fertil- 
izers before a farmer's club in Philadelphia, and I made strenuous eft'orts to organ- 
ize a company to work these deposits, but the fitting time had not arrived. Since 
that time many companies have been organized and untold quantities of marl 
have been taken out and sold. One of my correspondents, viz: J. C. Gaskill, of 
Birmingham, N. J., writes me, April 11, 1883 : -'Two of us originated the first com- 
pany seventeen years since, and worked and sold marl from the beds. It was called 
(as now) the Pemberton Marl Company. Have sold an immense quantity." I think 
investigation will prove that the greensand marl on the Pamunkey river contains fer- 
tilizing agencies superior to any other known deposits, and as no bottom has as yet been 
found in the Virginia beds, notwithstanding they have dug 70 and 80 feet in depth, and 
as it extends over an area of at least 200 square miles, the reader can readily compre- 
hend that it is, and will be for hundreds of years, inexhaustible. On the Pamunkey it 
is found in solid body from 5 to 60 feet above the surface of the water, and can be 
shovelled into flat-boats as easily as any dirt, and can be delivered in Baltimore 
for $3 a ton at a decided profit, and 500 barges can load at the same time, with 
no annoyance whatever ; whereas, the New Jersey marls are inland, and hence 
could only be delivered by carts, wagons, or by rail. The Pamunkey is some 50 
miles long and rises in the Blue Eidge mountains, and is navigable for 35 miles for 
vessels drawing six feet of water, and can be easily deepened to twice that depth. It 
ebbs and flows with each tide, although fresh water, and rises and falls some three to 
four feet. We have at least fifteen miles of these deposits on this river. 

Take Especial Notice. 

Briefly, the decided advantages of using the greensand marl are — 

First. It is cheaper than all other fertilizers. 

Second. It acts favorably on all soils, either clay, sandy or loamy. 

Third. It contains nearly all the constituents that are constantly being removed by all 
crops. 

Fourth, It will continue (unlike barn-yard manure) its good effects for many years, 
variable according to the state of land. 



Fifth. In consequence of its affinity for moisture, it keeps the crops in good dark 
green growing condition in a dry season, when surrounding crops, not marled, die and' 
dry out. 

Sixth. When the land has been limed to death and will yield no crops, the applica- 
tion of say 250 bushels to the acre, will make it fruitful the first year, and its beneficial 
effects will show more advantageously at every year up to the the third and fourth year, 
when it will hold its own for a dozen years, with no additional fertilizing. 

Marl — Its Definition. 

The question has heen asked of me a score of times. What is marl, and how came it 
deposited as you describe ? The first question I will answer to the best of my ability- 
The second is only known to the Divinity. The American Cyclopedia says: "'Marl is a 
clay containing a large proportion of carbonate of lime, sometimes 40 and 50 per cent., 
and sometimes the relics of shells." Johnson's New Cyclopedia says: "Marl is a name 
vaguely applied to those soils and earths which contain a mixture of clay and sand, 
with a considerable proportion of carbonate of lime." And it further says that the 
greensand marl of New Jersey is valuable from the presence of phosphate of lime and 
potash; and also that there is in Canada West (Ontario) a white marl. Chambers' En- 
cyclopedia says: "Marl is a mixture (naturally existing) of clay and carbonate of lime. 
Marl soils are in general of great natural fertility, and it is very advantageously used 
as a manure, acting both chemically and mechanically. It has been known from an- 
cient times. An English statute of 1225 gave every man the right to sink a marl pit on 
his own grounds. Bituminous marl is found in Germany." Noah Webster says: "Marl 
is a mixed earthy substance, consisting of carbonate of lime, clay and silicious sand in 
very variable proportions." The Standard Dictionary says : "Marl is a fat earth, con- 
taining carbonate of lime." Lyman Cobb's Lexicon says: "Marl is a sort of fat clay, 
or manure." 

The London Imperial Dictionary says, "The name (marl) is erroneously used for soils, 
containing no lime, Appleton's Cyclopedia says, marl is little known in the United States, 
except in New Jersey." The truth is that marl is f oand in probably one-half of the states of 
the Union. This erroneous declaration of Appleton's reminds me of a few lines written 
by the author many years ago, viz : 

"Geology is an uncertain science, and books on the subject are made up from supposed 
known facts, new discoveries necessitate the making of new theories and new works on the 
subject, changing from year to year." 

"Marl has been used in Europe since the earliest known ideas of Rome," so says Bell's 
Cyclopedia. 

Bell also says : 
"Ji has been domonstrated by practical tests that it is as active and lasting fertilizer 
as the best super-phosphates, and an arnmoniated greensand marl can be easily made, 
which is equal in value to Cob's, Phillip''s or Baiigh^s best phosphate' s of lime at less 
than one quarter of the cost to the farmer." 

An old adage says : 

" Who marls sand shall buy the land ; 
Who marls clay throws all away." 

These two lines positively indicate that the ancients knew the difference between 
shell and greensand marl. In a v/ork of 450 pages on artificial manures, written by 
William Crooke, of London, there is no mention whatever of marl. 

Page 188, of Geology of N. C , for 1875, says: "The discovery of a greensand marl bed 
is an event of 7nore importance than that of a gold or copper mine. Page 189, says, 
" The amount of greensand marl is very small in our state, although the shell marl is 
very abundant." 

Now I take exceptions to the various definitions, especially to that portion of Chambers 
where he says, "naturally existing." All marls are produced. A true definition of the 
vast manurial deposits of Virginia would be the following : Greensand marl is a composite 
fertilizer, made up in ages past from the remains of billions of shells, fishes, reptiles, 
birds, quadrupeds and man in a state of decomposition, and disintegration, with carbo- 
nate, sulphate and phosphate of lime, potash, charcoal, silica, iron, quartz, kaolin, and 
other substances of an oleaginous nature. 

Millions of years since the innumerable mastodons, saurians, elephants, deer, horses, 
sharks and other organic remains which now are found in these deposits, where roving about 



the land and swimming in the ocean waters, and after enjoying their alloted leases of life, 
they died and in some incomprehensible manner were deposited in above localities, then 
fossilized. 

Marl was first known in Monmouth county, N. J. in 1768, by a farmer who was dig- 
ging a well, and he dumped it into the adjoining ground and in the Geological Reports 
of the state, it is said that the good effects are perceptible now. 

Marl Elsewhere. 

E. & I. C. Ruffin published a work in 1840 entitled "The Farmers Register," it was 
printed in Petersburg, Va. It contains many articles upon the subject of calcareous 
manures. Prof. H. D. Rogers in his Geological Reports of N. J. calls marl the black 
micaceous sands. Some call it gun powder marl. Prof. Vanuxem found 14 varieties of 
marl, at Shell Bluff, on the Savannah river in S. C. containing from 37 to 93 per cent, 
of carbonate of lime. Ruffin says, Feb. 3d 1841, a deposit of fossil shells was found in 
Somerset county, Md., also found in Clairborne county, Ala., also in the James river Va. 
at Cogging Point, also small deposits in Woodstock, Vt. two to seven feet in thickness. 
Ed F. Wickham, used the Pamunkey river marl in 1824 with great advantage. He also 
says my stable manure loas much improved by dumping it on dry marl, and afterwards 
mixinrj it, it retained all the ammonia and other salts, my increase in crops ^vas over 100 
per cent, on 500 acres of land. Capt. Drury, of King William co., says the same in 1840. 
Richard Hill speaks of it in the highest terms in 1814, obtained from the Pamunkey. 
The gray marl in James river was used as a fertilizer in 1776. 

Fortunate. 

After securing nearly all of the available frontage of all the marl on the Pamunkey 
river in the purchase and lease of between 2000 and 5000 acres. I was agreeably sur- 
prised on reaching Richmond to learn that some 4000 miles of the railroads near 
the Atlantic Ocean frona Louisiana and the Mississippi river to West Point (which is 
the terminus of the Pamunkey river, and is one of the finest harbors on the coast, never 
freezing up in mid-winter, and with water deep enough to float the Great Eastern), had 
been purchased by a Syndicate, and that West Point was destined to become a city, and 
the Great Atlantic outlet for the vast quantities of corn, cotton, tobacco, rice and sugar 
grown in the above localities. 

I saw many Virginians who had tested the artificial phosphates and guanos, costing 
from $12 to |50 a ton, and who unhesitatingly declared that the marl was superior for 
two reasons; it lasted for years with no renewal, and it gave better results. I shall 
propose to the first organized company to furnish enough marl for five acres, to respon- 
sible farmers anywhere, who will pay the nominal sum of the cartage provided they will 
give the increased crops on the five acres for three years. 

During my brief sojourn in Virginia I bad the extreme pleasure of meeting some of 
its most distinguished citizens, and among them all I found the same courteous, candid, 
gentlemanly manners (with one exception), and this one may have been suffering from 
some intestinal trouble. Among the number was the mayor of Richmond, Hon W. 
C. Carrington, who manifested the utmost interest in any measure tending to increase 
the population of Virginia, or develope its wonderful treasures. I also met Judge 
B. W. Lacy, of Richmond, who is greatly interested upon the subject of fertilizers 
in general and the green sand marl in particular, which he has successfully tested upon 
his farm at Tunstall, in King William county. I also saw Mr. E. B. Moon, publisher of 
the Virginia Real Estate Index, at Richmond, and he informed me that he was selling a 
good many farms to Northern farmers, and that he would gladly publish anything I 
might write to aid in getting the marl deposits of Virginia properly worked, and further, 
offered to take |1,000 worth of marl and pay for the same in advertising. Mr. Orin L. 
Cotrill and Capt. C. M. Wallace, of Richmond, Va., have both signified their willingness 
(by letter) to aid me in developing the mineral wealth of Virginia. So did Hon. Jolrn 
S. Barbour, of Alexandria, Va., whom I met on the cars. I also met Col. W. W. Gordon, 
of Richmond, who spoke in the highest terms of the marl, which he had used for twenty 
years. 

Thirty years ago the total value of the Southern crops of cotton, tobacco, rice, hay, 
hemp and sugar was $138,605,723. The census of 1880 makes it $760,000,000, and its 
northern outlet on the Atlantic coast is going to be largely West Point. Within four 
years 9,500 acres of land at and near Cluuiemont, Va., on the James river, have been 
sold to farmers from the North and West. The largest purchases have been plots of 300 
acres, and the smallest 20. The new settlers express themselves as delighted with their 
new possessions. , 



West Point, Vii'ginia. 

ITS WHAEF FACILITIES AND EAILEOAD AND STEAMBOAT BUSINESS THE FEKTILIZEE TKADE 

PKOTEOTION AGAINST EIEE — -IMPEOVEJVtENTS. 

[Baltimore American.] 

Landing at West Point the visitor is at once struck with the immense terminal facili- 
ties there. Along the river front, pier after pier, shed after shed, are seen, in all fully 
3,500 feet of water-front wharfage, and with the sheds and platforms, thousands upon 
thousands of square feet of floor space. Three steamers at one time can load and un- 
load on the new Baltimore pier alone ; three or four at the Fertilizer pier, and probably 
six or eight at the long compress piers. In fact, the landing capacity is equal to that 
of the Lightstreet wharves. The wharf at which the boat landed on Saturday consists 
of one solid pier 1,100 feet long by 150 feet wide, not counting the outside platforms, 
and which, with the exception of about 300 feet, left open as one of the securities against 
fire, is all under roof. From the lower end of this pier runs another — the cotton com- 
press pier — 400 feet in length and 100 in width. Here is located the immense cotton 
compress of the Morse pattern, which has a capacity of turning out sixty bales of cot- 
ton per hour — a bale a minute. Passing again to the upper end of the pier first named, 
another and entirely new pier and shed is seen, which was built for and to be exclusively 
used by the Baltimore trade. This pier and shed is probably one of the largest and 
finest in the country. It ends on the shore, and is in dimensions 405x155 feet, contain- 
ing 62,775 square feet of floor space. The shed, which is thirty feet under the eaves, is 
built with a monitor roof, and resembles the great Boston Coliseum of Peace Jubilee 
times in appearance. Down the centre for almost the entire length extends a doable 
track, thus enabling two trains of cars to load at the same time, one from either side 
These building and wharves, so far named, are all for the general business of the Rich-, 
naond and Danville system. About them all, and enabling cars to be loaded from any 
point, are lines of track extending in all directions, and connecting a short distance 
away with the main trBck. The usual buildings for offices, etc., are conveniently 
located. 

THE FEETILIZEB WHAEF. 

Continuing the tour of inspection, the next place visited, and the most interesting, 
perhaps, to Baltimoreans, was the fertilizer pier, where it is claimed, exists the most 
perfect system known for handling fertilizers. The pier itself is 600 feet in length by 
130 feet in width. Upon it is built the fertilizer shed, or storehouse, which is 450 feet 
in length by 75 feet in width, and probably 25 feet under the eaves. Extending over 
the wharf, from the water end to and within the shed for its entire length, is an elevated 
platform and railway, similar to the coal elevators now in use on the water-front, for the 
unloading of fertilizers in bulk. In unloading, buckets handled by steam are used, 
which elevates the fertilizers to the platform and dumps it into cars of two-tons capa-^ 
city each. When filled the cars are whirled aroi^nd the elevator track into the store- 
house and there dumped into the proper recepticle. The shed is divided into com- 
partments of about 1,000 tons capacity each, the large manufacturers having one or 
more compartments, as their trade demands. It was found that all the Baltimore firms 
were represented. The elevated road is used exclusively for fertilizers in bulk. When 
shipped in bags the vessels can lie alongside the wharf and unload directly into the cars, 
which can run up to and alongside of the entire length of the pier on both sides of the 
shed. A feature of the handling in -bulk, and an excellent provision for the manufacturer, 
is that he can send along a cargo of fertilizer, which the company stores in one of the 
compartments, and on receipt of an order for so many tons to such a point the company 
bags the material and forwards it to its destination. The total capacity of the store- 
house is from 10,000 to 12,000 tons at one time. Last year the Richmond and Danville 
handled about 30,000 tons, and expects to double it the present season. The companj- 
is now talking of erecting two more piers and storehouses similar to the one above de- 
scribed for the fertilizer trade. 

PEOTECTION AGAINST FIEE. 

An important improvement made at West Point since the last disastrous fire, in 1880, 
is the introduction of a fire service and a system of electric lighting, both of which are 
models in their way. For lighting the wharves and other property thirty-one electric 
lights are now in use, which are run by a thirty-five horse power engine. For the fire 
service they have a powerful Worthington force pump capable of throwing an immense 
stream of water, and also numerous hydrants and cisterns, scattered here and there, where 
deemed necessary. There is an alarm whistle connected witli the engine-house, which 



9 

can be blown by an electric system similar to that used in hotels, from different points 
on the piers. The employees of the line at West Point — about four hundred in number 
— are drilled as a fire brigade, as are also the boat hands of the York river steamers. To 
show the efficiency of the latter. Captain Jones on Saturday called them without warning 
to a test-alarm. In less then half a minute the deck hose was in readiness throwing 
water, and in less than one minute three boats were lowered from the davits, the crews 
in, and ready for service in saving life. 

THE CITY OF WEST POINT. 

Since West Point aspires to the dignity of a mayor and council, it is not, perhaps, 
out of place to call it a city — although its population is less than a thousand. The loca- 
tion is a pleasant one, lying as it does between the Pamunkey and Mattaponi (pro- 
nounced Mat-ta--po-mgh) rivers, which, here uniting, form the York river. There is one 
principal street and several cross-streets, the plan of the town being very regular. One 
thing in particular was noticed in passing through the city, and that was the unusual air 
of comfort — and at times, even luxury — pervading the entire i)lace. Not a sign of pov- 
erty was anywhere noticeable. There are quite a number of new buildings now being 
put up, and also a new Protestant Episcopal church. When this is finished there will 
be three churches in the place. 

Marl Again. 

Mr. C. H. Bond, superintendent of the marl works at Farmingdale, N. J., says that 
the marl was known in 1823, and occasionally used by neighboring farmers; that in 
1868 a company was formed, since which time it has been worked very extensively. Over 
twelve acres has been dug out and carried away to an average depth of thirty feet. Mr. 
Boud gave me a great amount of very interesting detail concerning the working of the 
deposit and other matter of great interest. About 1823 ; his father, Hugh Boud, found 
the deposit now worked by the Freehold and Squantum Company. A train of cars runs 
at the bottom of the excavation and the marl, 25 feet deep, is taken off, leaving the bank 
almost perpendicular, A body of marl 18 feet long, 8 feet wide and 14 feet deep, con- 
tains about 150 tons. Twenty bushels weigh about one ton, and each bushel weighs 
about 100 pounds. They sell about 2,000 tons a month, mostly to farmers in their own 
State. 

Certificate. 

Dr. William B. Croxten, of Manquin, Va., says that George M. Bassett marled his land in 
patches in 1863, and you can plainly see the difference now, and he has never re-marled 
the same land. Dr. Croxten says he is now getting 250 bushels of corn to the acre by 
marling, when he could not before obtain ten bushels. A patch covered with thistles for 
years was entirely killed by marling, and he now cuts some years two tons of clover per 
acre. He has been down in his marl pits 80 feet and found no bottom. Mr. Hogan 
says: I obtain 23 bushels of wheat from my marled land, and ten only when I have 
not added the greensand marl. 

Another. 

John C. Lacey, of King William county, Va., told me that he bought a farm in 1868 
that was worn out and by marling he has so enriched it that he raises elegant crops, and 
that he does not use his stable manure. He considers the marl more valuable, and it 
retaines its virtues for so many years, when stable manure must be replenished annually. 
Dr. John T. Lewis and Dr. Thos. Caster, and many other reliable farmers, made similar 
statements, after testing the marl for from 10 to 35 years. 

Marl, Where Found. 

I met on the cars, when returning from Richmond, I. C, Washington, of Kingston, N. 
C, who says that the calcareous marl is found in the Neuse river. He is a relative of 
Bushrod Washington and of Gen. George Washington. 

Beads 

Prof. S. S. Haldeman, who devoted so much time to prehistoric beads, would be won- 
derfully excited if he saw two black primative looking beads, over half an inch long, 
that I found 20 feet below the surface in a marl deposit in King William county. 

Fertilizers. 

Over one-third of the population of the United States are farmers and the other two- 
thirds are dependent upon the first third for their eatables ; and no farmer can succeed 
except by the use of manures, and the whole subject is now in its infancy, hardly two 
farmers can agree upon wbp*; lands are best for their soils and how and when to apply 



10 

them. I have predicted for more than a quarter of a century that the time will arrive 
-when farmers can analyze their soils in different portions of their farms and supply the 
deficiency with the same ease and certainty, that a chemist could tell the constituents 
of gun powder. At present we are woefully in the dark. 

James J. Carter of Chester county Pa. says in the Agricultural Report of Pennsyl- 
vania, page 64 : "While I had charge of the Agricultural farm in Chester county, I made 
several thousand experiments with fertilizers, upon all the crops usually grown on a 
farm, and in a large majority of cases the fertilizer that was richest in soluable phos- 
phate of lime gave the best results, and the fertilizer that did best for corn was likely 
to do the best for all other crops." Now I claim that if anyone interested will visit the 
lands in King William county Va. where the marls have been applied and where they 
have not, he will find this distinct difference, where the marl has been applied to worn 
out lands with about 350 bushels to the acre, that year after year (with no other 
manure or replenishment), abundant crops of corn, clover, peas etc., are harvested and 
where it has not been used, only a half crop is made. I saw one hundred acres of corn 
which would average eleven feet high and four to five ears to each stock, marled, 
and in adjoining fields, with same variety of soil and no marl, scraggy looking corn 
grew five and six feet high and light green color. I saw an inland deposit where the 
marl had been used for years, the walls were thirty feet high of solid marl and 300 feet 
long, I saw some 200 tons of oyster shells on a farm placed their in 1859 which had been 
purchased to grind up and place on the farm, and in consequence of the discovery 
of marl there, they now lay unused. There are three kind of soils in King William and 
Hanover counties, red earth, clay and sand, and the marl shows the same results on all. 
The farmers of Pennsylvania, I have found divided as regards the beneficial results 
of marl and the reason why they are unsettled is that one has tried a poor marl and 
another a rich marl, and it varies like the quality of apples. The white marl is calcar- 
eous, and nearly all carbonate of lime, the gray differs somewhat. The Florida marl 
and the marl found in Canada and on the Neuse river in N. C. are no better than com- 
mon burned lime stone, but the greensand marl of Va. is a horse of another color and 
value. 

Manures. 

If you propose to build a house you first select the lot, then buy the various materials 
necessary to make a complete domicile. The bricks, morter, floor and other boards, 
shutters, windows, sills, lock, keys, hinges, etc., have each their especial locality and part 
to fulfil. Just so it is in the formation of a tree or plant. Certain elements are 
positively essential, and if these ingredients are not in the soil your ploughing, planting 
and hoeing are all futile. Putty is composed of certain parts of whiting and linseed 
oil. Now you may experiment until the end of all things and you cannot make putty 
without you use the above simples. More than that, the ingredients must be mixed 
in certain proportions. The laws of chemistry are positive and never change. The 
successful baker is the one who puts his flour, yeast, salt and water together after well 
known receipts. He cannot throw the salt, flour, water, etc., together without any ■ 
reference to the rules. Poor bread is always the result of a lack of this knowledge. 
Now the sooner the farmer comes to this conclusion the quicker he will farm advan- 
tageously, profitably and with pleasure. An analysis of the soils must tell their com- 
ponent parts. If they lack carbonate, sulphate or phosphate of lime in order to grow 
your contemplated crop, you must supply the demand or your labor will be thrown 
away. I have clipped a few newspaper articles to prove these statements : 

" An analysis of 2,000 speeimens of wheat made by Professor Richardson, of the 
Department of Agriculture, leads him to the conclusion that the soils of the Atlantic 
coast have been more or less worn out ; that the middle West is loosing its fertility, and 
that only in the far West are to be found the plant food and nitrogen which make the 
richest wheat. The Eastern wheats are found by Professor Richardson to be deficient 
in quality and size ; the wheats of the Pacific coast are of full size, but the quality is far 
below the standard. The value of these extensive examinations is the indication given 
to the wheat grower, who has not time to improve the soil, as to the locality of the best 
wheat growing belt ; the warning it conveys to the farmers of the East and middle 
West as to the necessity of a liberal use of fertilizers and the clue it gives to all wheat 
growers to the localities that produce the best seed wheat." 

Anotlier. 

" In the last report of the Scottish Horticultural Association is a paper on the analysis 
of soils, taken from the vineyards in which the crops have failed. Comparing the con- 
stituents with those of soils upon which grapes have been successfully grown, it appears 
that there is a deficiency of lime and potash in the unproductive vineyards." 



11 

Another. 

"Four thousand pouuds of apples, when reduced to ashes, will weigh about 100 
pounds, which contain thirteen pounds of potash, twenty-live ounces of soda, and a 
little lime, iron and magnesia." 

Anotlier. 

" Sand contains no fertilizing properties to any extent, excepting potash, which is in 
the form of silicate of potash ; but the action of the decomposition of these fertilizers 
which are very rich in nitrogenous matters liberates or makes soluble the potash, or a 
part of it, so that it becomes a very good fertilizer for all crops."' 

Phosphates and Potash. 

" Phosphate of lime is only one of the mineral fertilizers upon which plants delight 
to feed, but which continual cropping, without returnes, will soon exhaust. Potash, upon 
which plants make large demands, is another. Grass and potatoes may be called potash 
plants, because, containing a large per cent, of this .mineral One hundred parts of dry 
hay will leave, when burned, nine per cent, of ash, which the largest part is potash. 
Successive crops of grass must, therefore, exhaust the land of this, its leading con- 
stituent, unless it is returned in some shape. Just what mineral fertilizers grass lands 
want in order to keep them in good productive condition may be learned from the 
following statement of that eminent scientist, Bousingault : ' Ten thousand pounds of 
good meadow hay contain 547 pounds of inorganic (mineral) matter, of which 130 
pounds are potash, soda, 10 pounds ; lime, 107 ; magnesia, 43 ; oxide of iron, 5 ; silica, 
189 ; sulphuric acid, 16 ; phosphoric acid, 32 ; and chlorine, 15. "While many of these 
are found in almost inexhaustible quantity in all tillable land, potash, lime, sulphuric 
and phosphoric acids diminish rapidly under cultivation, unless returned in some way. 
It is a suicidal policy, therefore, to neglect the application of these mineral fertilizers 
on land severely cropped. Nor has any fertilizer a more permanent effect on such land 
than wood ashes." 

Another. 

" Potash is one of the most necessary ingredients of the soil for plant food. It is at 
the same time very abundant in the soil, but unfortunately is held in its combination 
with silica, in the form of a silicate, in an insoluble and inert condition ; and therefore 
it is that an application of potash, in whatever form it may be, to the soil has such re- 
markably favorable effects. It is because of their effects upon the soil in rendering the 
potash available by dissolving the silicate that lime, salt, chloride of potash, and per- 
haps gypsum, or the sulphuric acid released from this in its decomposition, are so bene- 
ficially used as fertilizers ; and it is this effect, also exerted by the atmosphere and the 
weather upon the silicates in the soil, that makes fall plowing, fallowing and cultivation 
of so much use. The abundance of potash that exists in the soil may be realized by 
considering the proportions of it which go to make up the following common rocks and 
minerals which enter into the composition of rocks. Mica, the glistening, scaly sub- 
stance that is so abimdant in almost every soil, and in a great many rocks, contains nine 
per cent., of potash, feldspar, (the flesh color and reddish rock which is so often asso- 
ciated with quartz in granite, gneiss, mica, slates, porphyry and basalt, and is often found 
in masses and veins alone,) contains no less than 17 per cent, of potash, and nearly all 
the slates contain a considerable portion. As these rocks form more or less of nearly all 
soils, clays, loams, gravels and sands, potash is therefore exceedingly abundant ; but, as 
we have said, it is so locked up as to be only slowly available. But as it becomes avail- 
able it is held very firmly in the soil, and is never carried off by the drainage. A farmer 
can never, therefore, go wrong in liberally supplying his soil with potash." — The Daii-y. 

Another writer says he is inclined to believe sulphur a very important factor, being 
equal in value, if not superior, to phosphoric acid. 

Sulphur exists in certain proportions in all soils, but chemists have been unable to 
discover that it performs any inaportant service as plant food. 

Causes of Decay. 

Innumerable rivers, streams and springs are perpetually loosening the soil, rasping 
down the rocks with sand, and bearing off billicns of tons of solid matter to the sea- 
bottom, where the whole mass is squeezed with terrific hydraulic pressure into stone, 
marble or solid strata of some kind. The Mississippi alone carries annually to the sea 
812,600.000,000 pounds of mud. All the habitable land of the globe is being continually 
ground and washed away—" planed down to the ocean-level ; while the sea-bottom is being 
as steadily filled up. The deposit of foraminiferal shells alone — not including other 
remains — is sufficient, as Huxley has calculated, to create a bed of limestone in the bot- 
tom of tie Atlantic and Pacific Oceans 800 feet thick, suj^posing these oceans to have 
existed lor only 100,000 years. 



12 
Adulteration of Phosphates. 

BY B. F. HALL OF SHEBMANSDALE. 

In looking over the "Tabulated Analysis of Fertilizers" as furnished me by the State 
■chemist (Dr. F. A. Geuth), I find that he has already analyzed 314 different samples. 
In that number there were 99 which had no potassa, and 45 no ammonia ; hence these 
■are called incomplete manures, and partake more of the nature of stimulants. Take, 
for instance, the South Carolina rock which has entered so largely into the composition 
of many of the fertilizers, and the amount available is from 200 to 300 pounds per ton. 
Here then, we have 1700 pounds which are useless and worthless both as to soil and 
plant. To give the reader an idea how some phosphates are made, I will suggest the 
following, viz : Take 1 ton of South Carolina rock, containing 200 pounds of phoshoric 
acid — 122 pounds of this is soluble and reverted, and 78 pounds are insoluble. Then we 
will add 20 pounds of potash and 25 pounds of ammonia. In tabular form : 

122 pounds phosphoric acid soluble and reverted at lOcts. per pound, - $12 20 
78 pounds phosphoric acid insoluble and reverted at 4cts. per pound, - - 3 12 
.20 pounds potash at Gets, per pound, -------120 

25 pounds ammonia at 17^^cts. per pound, - - - - - -- 4 37 

Total .-..-.--..- $20 89 

Here now we have a ton of phosphate worth $20.89 the same article being sold in 
market at from $35 to $40 ; but we must not forget that we are handling 1700 pounds 
of rock which is entirely worthless. And what is true in the foregoing statement in 
reference to this rock, is true of it wherever it is found. In the list No. 303 I find a 
fertilizer which has but 6 pounds of insoluble phosphoric acid, worth 37 cents, and 24 
pounds of potash worth 14 cents, and two pounds of ammonia worth 17)^ cents per 
pound, making in all 86 cents, and yet this fertilizer is selling in the market at $15, and 
farmers are buying it because it is cheap. This phosphate has but 10 pounds of plant 
food in a ton. What the 1990 pounds are made up of I won't tell you, because I don't 
know. Then there is another fertilizer calculated in the same way with but $5.05 and is 
■being sold at $20. And another still worth but $26.27, and is being sold at $40. Some 
of these very phosphates have been introduced into this country and sold pretty exten- 
sively . We will now look at some of the fertilizers made out of bone and animal offal. 
In some of these we have as much as 40 per cent, of bone, capable of producing : 

230 pounds of soluble and reverted phosphoric acid at lOcts, per pound, - $23 00 

Insoluble phosphoric acid, 25 pounds at 6cts. per pound (it being bone), - 1 60 

Potash, 90 pounds at 6 cts, per pound, - - - - - - - - 5 40 

Ammonia, 80 pounds at 173;^cts. per pound, - - - - - - - 14 00 

Total, - - - - - - - $43 80 

This phosphate, and a number of like import, are being sold at $40 and less. Dr. 
Gueth tells me to select no phosphate, where the selling price exceeds the estimated or 
commercial value, for he has counted the ingredients at retail prices. Again, there is 
this difference in bone phosphate, and phosphate made up of something else, for after 
the available portion (and this is all the chemist gives) of a ton is but given as above, 
the residue is deposited with it in the soil, and like the decomposition of vegetable mat- 
ter it becomes soluble in the course of time and will last for years. Its effects are very 
manifest where it has been used 10 or 12 years. For example let us take a load of 
manure of 3 tons weight and we have about 3980 pounds of matter and 2020 pounds of 
dry matter, capable of producing 11 5 pounds of phosphoric acid, 30 pounds of potash 
and 24 pounds of nitrogen, equal to 20 pounds of ammonia. By putting 4 loads on an 
acre of ground we would have just four times this amount, viz : 12 tons of manure con- 
taining 46 pounds of phosphoric acid, 120 pounds potash, and 80 pounds of ammonia. 
Now I will take up a super-phosphate made up of bone and animal offal, and put the fol- 
lowing on another acre of ground, viz : 26 pounds of soluble and reverted phosphoric 
acid, 16 pounds of insoluble phosphoric acid, 14 pounds of potash, and ll pounds of 
ammonia, and I will insure better results both in wheat and clover. 

This I have tested now for 6 years, and I know whereof I speak, and I am satisfied 
that it will last longer with the same treatment than manure. Whether it is because of 
its mineral qualities, or because of its availability, I can not tell, but such has been the 
case where I tried it. 

I once heard of an old lady who had conceived the idea that a pound was a pound — 
hence she used a tin cup for her scales, counting the full of it a pound. This might do 



13 

in ''shot and shell," but it would not do so well in ''chaff or feathers," and just so it is 
with some men in regard to fertilizers — a "tinful is not a tinful," unless it contains the- 
same ingredients. We should know what we want, or at least what we are getting, and 
this we can only do by referring to the analysis of all the different kinds of fertilizers as 
published by the state chemist. And yet there are some people (not many) who say that 
there is no dependence to be put in the analysis. Chemists cannot tell what these phos- 
phates are made up of. The science of chemistry, whether it be analytical or agricul- 
tural, has become so perfect, that the chemist can tell the component parts of any com- 
position. And why not tell what our phosphates are made up of, and their per cent? 

The rule laid down by Leibig, Lawes, Volcker and Ville (the best chemists that ever 
lived) is, therefore to supply the land with more phosphate than the harvests remove and 
this can only be done by selecting what is styled a perfect manure — one possessing all 
the elements of "plant life." 

Wonderful Increase in Farms. 

Acording to the census bulletin, the number of farms in the United States was 2,600,- 
000 in 1870, and 4,000,000 in 1880. 

This vast increase in the number of farms indicates that, first, the demands for the 
products of farms is augmenting; second, that the number of farmers is of necessity much, 
larger and, lastly that the demand for artificial fertilizers is increasing in the same 
ratio. 

Apology IS^o. 2, 

You can easily see that the statistics which are dropped in here and there in this 
work, are not arranged, no effort has been made by the writer to get up a scientific 
essay, or j)repare the reading matter so as to pass a critical examination by professed 
book makers, my whole object is to instruct those who peruse these pages, to show: 

First. — The necessity of fertilizing the ground when crops are expected. 

Second. — That an immense amount of money, and a very large number of individuals 
and corporations are engaged in the manufacture and sale of fertilizers. 

Third. — The enormous demand. 

Fourth. — That in the vast deposits of greensand marl in Virginia, you have all the 
required elements found in all other deposits and fertilizers with a few exceptions. The 
Virginia marl contains any quantity of black nodules that seem to be nearly pure phos- 
j)hate of lime, any quantity of bones in a petrified and semi fossilized condition and 
millions of tons of phosphate rock in among and under the beds of greensand marl. 

My examinations running through seven days, up and down the Pamunkey river 
makes me conclude that so far as phosphate rock is concerned, that there are millions 
of tons of it. At one locality on the Pamunkey I found under, say 40 feet of marl a re- 
gular quarry of phosphate rock of which I have specimens. And in an inland excava- 
tion I found tons of phosphate rock that had been thrown to one side as useless, many 
very large boulders. 



In order to give my readers a slight, imperfect idea of the "Sunny South," I will here 
introduce two letters which I sent to the Harrisburg, Pa., Patriot, while on my brief tour 
in that favored locality, which must necessarily be (in a few decade of years) the 
"Garden of Eden" of the United States. 

Manquin, King William Co., Va. ^ 
August 2d, 1883. ) 

Here I am, within ten miles of the locality where George Washington was married to 
Mrs. Custis, in the town of Manquin, King William county, about twentyfour miles from 
West Point, on the York river, and about two hundred and fifty miles directly south of 
Harrisburg'. 

I would ask every inhabitant of Pennsylvania, who has ten dollars to spare for pastime 
regaining of health, or a desire to see what is unknown in his own state, to take the same 
trip over the same route, were it not that there is no hotel or boarding-house here. If 
there was, hundreds and thousands of visitors would flock to this wonderful locality, 

I took the cars at Harrisburg at half past four o'clock Wednesday morning for Balti- 
more, arrived there about nine o'clock, and spent the balance of the day up to four p. m.. 
in seeing Druid park, and other views of that beautiful city. Then I took the steamer 
Havana, for West Point. The distance from your city to West Point is 275 miles. I 
reached there at eight o'clock on Thursday morning. The boat is well equipped . State 
rooms and the table are excellent. The sail down the Chesapeake bay, and up the York 
river was magnificent. At West Point, which is one of the best harbors on the Atlantic- 



14 

coast, I took the Richmond (Cars, and left them at Lester Manor, and there met a Harris- 
burg born gentleman, Mr. William M. Stehley, who took me in his buggy twelve miles 
to this extraordinary locality, which is only twenty-two miles from the far-famed city of 
Richmond. 

Mr . Stehley and his courteous sister, Mrs. Catharine Frazer, who are brother and sister 
of Mrs. Maria Haldeman, and their mother, Mrs. John Stehley, live at No 9 Front street 
Harrisburg. Mrs. Frazer owns some 465 acres here, and her farm is called " The Grove." 
Quite a number of your citizens have been here. John, Robert, Edwin, Mary and Maria 
Haldeman, Dr. A. Rutherford, Miss Eliza Robinson, the daughter of Rev. Dr. Robinson, are 
a few of them. The weather is delightful. I am obliged at night to keep the covering over 
me. Such a thing as sunstroke is unknown to the inhabitants. The sun is no more 
oppressive in mid-day than in your city. Friday morning the wild mocking bird awoke 
me. The splendid grove of ancient trees was resonant with the music of the varied song- 
sters. The Pamunkey river runs through this section and is navigable for thirty miles 
for good sized vessels. 

In a boat I sailed up and down some ten miles. It is from 200 to 500 feet wide, and 
its banks are from five to thirty feet high; and I never saw such a variety of trees, 
shrubs and foliage, so very rich and dark green in color. It reminds you of the banks 
of the Amazon. Any quantity of rare wild flowers are seen on its banks. Coral honey- 
suckle and morning glories will attract your attention — the latter flower some three in- 
ches wide. Its banks are impregnated with the fertilizing marl, and its verdure is rank 
in its richness. The oak, catalpa, hickory, black walnut, holly, locust and other trees 
grow to most splendid proportions. In my tramping in the woods, I keep constantly 
finding some new flowers. Jno. Schmidt would get wild if he could see them. Curious 
cactus, gladiolas, ferns of all varieties and a beautiful flower called "crape myrtle.". I 
cannot describe it. In front of Mrs. Frazer's house is a box tree ten feet high, and 
near the house stand locust trees literally covered with the English ivy. One vine that 
looks like a grape, bears a fruit said to be extra delicious, called sloe. The passion 
flower is quite common in the woods. Fruits of all kinds are very handsome. The per- 
simmon tree is very common. 

While riding up from Lester Manor, I was quite surprised to see a long string of col- 
ored women, with huge bags on their heads, full of sumach, which they dry and sell to 
the stores, which again sail it to the tanners. 

They walked along quite rapidly, with the heavy burdens balanced on their heads. I 
am fattening fast on Mrs. Frazer's Southern feed. Cornmeal is cooked in every con- 
ceivable style. Mr. Tinker could make a fortune if he would send some one here to get 
her various receipts for scratch-back, butter, bread, corn cake, &c. The turkey buzzard, 
a very large bird, is quite common here, and is never killed in consequence of its being 
so good a scavenger. Whenever any dead animal is thrown into the fields, these birds 
are attracted for miles distant, and stay near it until all of it is eaten up. 

This locality will, in a few years, become widely celebrated in consequence of the in- 
exhaustible deposits of greensand marl, which has been for many years almost the ex- 
clusive ferzilizer used on the large farms of this historic state. As I shall soon make 
an exhibition of this marl, and the numerous styles of fossil bones found here, I will 
not now further dilate upon the subject. 

The woods, lakes and rivers here are fu].l of birds. Wild geese and turkeys, ducks, &c, 
are in great numbers in their season. Quails, pheasants and foxes, and deer 
are also plenty, but there comes one bird in September that puzzles the naturalist. It 
is called the sora. It is killed at night in the woods by negroes. It is very fat and de- 
licious eating. No one can tell whence it comes or where it goes, or where it raises its 
young. 

When "^the first frost makes its appearance, the sora disappears, and they so 
secretly leave this locality that no one has seen them when making their departure. 

Mrs. Frazer has some fig trees which bear luxuriously every year. Grapes grow wild 
in abundance, of many varieties. 

Mr. Stehley has marked one vine that contains extremely large fruit of singular qual- 
ities, and I shall get some cuttings for my friends at the proper time. The green 
grapes on this vine are larger now than most others when ripe. There is any quantity 
of new things to be saen. The river is full of various kinds of fish, and sturgeons are 
caught six feet long. Shad and herring come here in great schools at certain sea- 
sons of the year. 

C. A. GREENE, M. D. 



15 

[Taken from Harrisburg, Pa, Patriot of August 9th, 1883.] 

Richmond, Va., ) 
Aug. 6th, 1883. \ 

I should be eternally glad if seven-eights of all the inhabitants noith of Mason 
and Dixon's line were compelled to pass at least one month in the company of the cit- 
izens of Virginia. Their eyes would be wonderfully opened up on several themes, which 
to-day are the problems of our great country. I've been in this historic state about one 
week, and I never met a more congenial, hospitable and better educated set of people 
in my life. The eleventh commandment of " Love thy neighbor as thy self, " is more 
closely lived up to here, than before known in my experience of half a century, and I 
have been no idle observer. Every name you meet of the towns or counties, 
reminds you of the Fatherlands of the people, but especially is old England repre- 
sented. The very large territory in which the immense deposit of marl is found is 
^called after one of England's sovereigns, King William county. All the old dukes' and 
lords' and titled baronets' names are attached to some locality. I have had many and 
many a conversation on the subject of the effects of the abolition of slavery, and the gen- 
eral declarations of those who were the owners of the negro almost universally say the 
following: — 

" No greater injury was evei- perpetrated against any people than the destruction of 
this, our inheritance, thus giving three millions totally uneducated blacks the right of 
suffrage and freedom." 

You are aware that schools for blacks were unknown, until the above political upheav- 
al took place, and all of the whites with whom I have conversed say that the great, and un- 
solved problem of to-day is : what shall become of the American Ethiopian ? And strange 
as it may seem, to the northerner, they do not socially affiliate to-day any more than oil 
and water would. To recognize a negro on the street, or to become in any way familiar 
with them, for instance to sit in the sameseat in a car with a colored man and intimately 
converse with him (if known), would be a barrier to the entrance to good society. In 
other words, these people have been educated from childhood up, " born in the bone," 
to believe the blacks to be an inferior race, born for servitude, incapable of achieving the 
same intellectual heights of the white man, 'and several generations will be born and pass 
away before their conceptions will be materially altered. They talk to and of their 
servants as though they believe sincerely what I have above stated. The quarters of the 
colored man in all the manors or farms are not as well made as are first-class pig pens 
in New York. 

And upon questioning the negroes who live in them as regards their likes and dislikes, 
I find them perfectly contented with their menial position. They seem to accept it as a 
matter of course. A manor is, a huge farm 400 to 2000 acres, and usually designated 
after some European manor. The coat of arms of some of the English nobility is 
gladly shown to you, hanging in their parlors as the evidence of descending from good 
stock. The Virginians of this class are decidedly clannish, and the poor unfortunate 
white citizen is not their companion. They hire him, but they do not associate with him. 
The houses of the negro are usually made of slabs or logs, and the interstices filled with 
mud, rude enough usually with no cellars, and the occupants would say to me : " This 
is good enough for the nigger." This last word as you are aware, originated from the 
Latin word niger or black. The celebrated legal writer Blackstone signed himself, 
Nigris, Lapidis. The negro quarters are sometimes within two hundred feet of the 
raansion, and some of them are a quarter of a mile distant, and it utterly surprises me 
to see the negro women carrying a tub or bucket full of water on their heads from 
massa's house to their cabins without spilling a drop, and with their arms swinging at 
their sides, Mr. Beauregard Turner, who lives near Mr. Stehley's, says he has a negro 
who can carry a watermelon on his head and one under each arm. The conformation of 
the top of the cranium, is decidedly different in form aud structure from the Caucasian. 

To-day I visited Libby prison, (tte headquarters of General Washington, during the 
Revolution) and many other objects of decided interest. The very large equestrian statue 
of Washington in the capitol grounds should be seen by every one who can invest ten dollars 
in seeing a rare work of art made by the sculptor, Houdon. It was unveiled some twenty 
years since. The horse then was burnished with gold, all traces of which are now gone. It 
shows the "Father of Our Country," with an arm outstretched, giving orders to his aids. The 
statues of other distinguished Virginians surround the monument, among whom are 
Chief Justice Marshall and Patrick Henry. This afternoon I propose visiting the spot 
about one mile from my hotel, where Pocahontas rescued Capt. John Smith from her 
father, Powhatan, and his subjects, also Henry Clay's and Stonewall Jackson's monu- 
ments, the bust of Lafayette, tombs of President Monroe, General Lee and Jefferson 
Davis' mansion and the battlefields around the city. I have seen the confederate monu- 
mfint singularly suggestive of the "Lost Cause." It is about thirty feet high and 



16 

pyramidical in shape, made of unhewn rough granite taken out of the James river, which! 
is a portion of the city. The city is abundantly supplied with splendid water from this 
river and the pumping house and its appurtenances are something like Fairmonnt. 
The Exchange hotel, where I am stopping, is a first class house, about as large as two of 
the Jones house. Two large buildings on each side of the street ate connected with a 
bridge some seventy feet long. The weather here to-day is less warm and uncomfortable 
than in your city during the last month. Tell all your readers to see Richmond, before 
they terminate their terrestrial existence. C. A. GREENE, M. D. 

New^ Jersey Marl. 

Prof. Geo. H. Cook, State Geologist, kindly sent me the Reports of N. J. State Board 
of Agriculture for 1876. It contains a large number of statistics in favor of the use of 
greensand marl; I will transcribe a few of them; on page 101 it says: "Lands which 
in the old style of cultivation had to be fallow, by the use of greensand marl, produced 
heavy crops of clover, and grow rich -while resting. Thousands of acres of land, which 
had been worn out, and left in common, are noiv by the use of this fertilizer, yielding 
crops of the finest qualiiy." Instances are pointed out all through the State where the 
greensand marl has been used, of farms that formerly would not support a family, now are 
making their owners rich by its use, Lands in southern New Jersey forty years ago were 
rated very low, now are much higher than in the northern portion of the State where the 
greensand marl has not been used. The land for farming purposes is higher in price than 
anywhere else in the United States. 

Gordon's History of New Jersey, Part 2d, page 6, of the year 1830, says: " It would 
be difficult to calculate the advantages which this State has gained, and will yet derive 
from the use of the greensand marl. It has already saved some districts from depopu- 
lation, and increased the inhabitants in others; and may in the future contribute to con- 
vert the Sandy Pine deserts into regions of agricultural wealth. [Note. This predic- 
tion has been verified.] In Morse's American Geography of 1819, it says of New Jersey: 
"Four-fifths of the six southern counties, or two-fifths of all the land in the State are 
barren. They produce little else but scrub oaks and stunted pines. The inhabitants 
raise a little maize, rye and potatoes, but subsist chiefly by feeding cattle on the salt 
meadows, and by fishing, [Note. The census of 1870 says that the highest priced lands 
in the State, and the largest amount of agricultural products is from these same six 
counties.] 

Wm. V. Conover, of Red Bank, Monmouth County, N. J., says: "I have used the 
greensand marl for fifty years. I find it beneficial to all soils; I use from thirty to one- 
hundred loads to the acre, I have improved land that was so poor it was worthless, and 
now I can cut two tons of hay per acre. It will prevent sandy soil from burning the 
crops, and clay soil from baking, and insure crops on all kinds of land; with barn-yard 
manure it makes the potato larger and smoother," 

I. I. Van Mater of Holmdel, N. J., says: "I have used it for twenty-four years. My 
grandfather discovered it in 1790. We have used as high as 3000 loads a year. The, 
good effects of the greensand marl have been perceptible on a portion of the farm where 
it was marled thirty years ago, and none applied since. Barnyard manure soon looses 
its effects." 

All through the above work are similar statements, occasionally a farmer has used 
some other varieties of marl with little or no advantage. 

Certificates. 

Mr. A. W. Wileroy who owns a large farm on the banks of the Pamunkey says: "I 
have seen its good effects for thirty years, I know of land in this county that was very 
poor made rich in a few years by the application of the greensand marl. Our lands 
that were barren forty years ago, are by its use now exceedingly fertile. It is the only 
permanent fertilizer known to farmers in this vicinity. I never heard the first person 
condemn the greensand marl who had given it a faithful trial." 

ANOTHEB. 

Dr. William V, Croxton, in a letter of August 1883, writes me the following: "I live a 
mile or so from the river Pamunkey; have been using the greensand marl twelve years, 
using from 250 to 300 bushels to the acre. I have applied it on some of my poorest 
soil. The benefit derived was soon apparent, especially after the first clover crop, which 
was about two tons to the acre. No farmer in this county who has put it on in same 
quantity to his poorest ground has a shadow of a doubt upon the question of its great 
value for all our crops; our fields that would not produce five bushels of wheat, now af- 
ter marling bring me twenty bushels to the acre, I consider greensand marl far super- 
ior to stable manure, and I know of lands where its good effects has shown for thirty 



years, and what is equally singular, larger quantities than above may be put in each 
acre without doing any injury wliatever." 

ANOTHEK. 

A widow lady by the name of S. C. Trimmer, living also near the above river, says : 
"My husband thirty years ago, spent a deal of his time carting on the greensand marl to 
our poor land, and I often gave him a good scolding for thus throwing away his time 
when we were so poor; but he kept right on carting on the marl whenever he could spare 
the time. Our land generally was then so poor it would not raise five bushels of com to 
the acre. He died about ten years ago, and now we are getting from forty to sixty bush- 
els of shelled corn to the acre in consequence of his marling, and I am now sorry he 
did not marl the whole farm." 

ANOTHEE. 

Mr. K. D. Hogan in same county writes me : "My father bought the farm I am now 
living on, of 440 acres, in 1843 for $2,200. Some years after that time he began apply- 
ing greensand marl to the land, and put it on nearly half the farm. In 1873 it had so 
much improved by this wonderful fertilizer that he was offered $9,000 for it. About 
250 bushels were scattered on each acre. One year he sold $4,900 worth of produce 
from this farm, and all of the farm to-day that was properly marled, continues to pro- 
duce all kinds of crops I desire to raise on it. To sum it all up, I think that our green- 
sand marl is the most perfect, and lasting of all known fertilizers." 

Marl. 

By an Act of the Pennsylvania legislature of June 28th, 1879, the greensand marl of 
New Jersey was admitted as a manure to the State without any provisions or penalties 
as provided for all other fertilizers, which was a first-class acknowledgement of its merits. 
If you will take two peck boxes and fill them with earth trom any portion of your 
farm, and into one box put say a quart of greensand marl and in both of them plant at 
the same time some oats, millet, and hemp seed; in one month you will see a very decid- 
ed difference in favor of the one containing greensand marl. 

Further Evidences that Impoverished Lands Require Manuring-. 

Dr. Delmay stated recently that the 480,000,000 bushels of wheat raised in this country 
in 1880 took from the land 2,800,000 tons of nitrogen, 1,000,000 tons of phosphoric acid 
and 120,000 tons of potash, and that these quantities were ten times as great as those 
contained in all the manures used in all the crops in the United States that year. Plainly, 
here was a heavy draft upon the soil, which is the bank account of our agriculture; 
The result is already seen in the diminished wheat yield in some of the Western States, 
that is, less income from a smaller capital. It is even now said that wheat farming does 
not pay in Missouri, because the average yield of a little more than thirteen bushels per 
acre will not meet the outlay for the crop. In some States the crop is even lighter. And 
how did all this come about ? The straw and cornstalks were burned up, and even the 
ashes allowed to blow away, as if it were a crime to return anything to the impoverished 
soil. It has been said that manure was often allowed to accumulate about barns until it 
was easier to move the barns away from the manure than the manure from the barns. 
The throwing away of cotton seeds for years in the South when it could have been re- 
turned to the soil with advantage is another flagrant instance of squandered capital. So 
is the failure to utilize the waste products of manufacturing establishments and thousands 
of tons of plant food, taken originally from the soil, run to waste every year through the 
sewers of our cities. The practical lesson from this for every individual farmer is to 
look forward beyond the money he received in any year and study whether any of it is 
taken from his capital. Such a course must be disastrous sooner or later. Unless the 
land is fed it will soon cease to feed him. The principal must be kept whole or growing 
at all hazard. The best farmers are those who look forward beyond immediate results. 
We have one man in mind who prepared his ground for wheat and the manure alone cost 
as much as the grain sold for. But he had doubled his principal, and every year since 
then this field has yielded a double interest in rich pasturage for his herd of Jersey. — 
Philadelphia Press. 

Marl Ag-ain. 

I want to decidedly impress my readers with these simple facts, that there cannot be 
found poorer land anywhere than in some parts of King William county, Va., and that 
if properly marled the same land will bear large crops, and that when the marl comes 
to or near the surface of the ground, as it does on the banks of the Pamunkey the shrubs, 
and trees and plants of all kinds grow most luxuriously. 

2 



Fertilizers S3l(l la United States, 

I received the following letter from Kon. George B. Loring, United States Com- 
missioner of Agriculture, made out by the statistician Hon. J. R. Dodge. 

Washington, D. C. December, 28th 1S83. 

Sir, the accompaning table is prepared in reply to your letter, containing the follow- 
ing inquiries. What amount of fertilizers were used in the United States in 1882, and 
what was the amount of money paid for the same. The tenth census shows that 
$28,586,397 was paid for fertilizers in the United States, and Territories in 1879 and 
$15,967,277 in eleven States as per table attached. 

Table showing the quantity and value of commercial fertilizers used in 1882 in the 
States named: 



States. 



Massachusetts . . 
Rhode Island . . 
Connecticut. . .. 

New Jersey 

Pennsylvania . . , 

Maryland 

Virginia 

South Carolina. 

Alabama 

Tennessee' 

Ohio 

Totals 

New York 

North Carolina 
'Georgia 

Total 



No. of tons. 



16,681 
2,000 
21,000 
30.163 
70,000 

100,000 
90,000 

113,000 
77,016 
15,000 
40,000 



574,860 
75,000 
80,000 

124.000 



854,844 



Av. price per ton, 



$35 00 
40 00 
19 86 

35 49 
30 00 

36 47 
33 89 
25 60 
38 54 
33 33 

37 30 



$32 71 



Total amt. paid. 



$583,835 
80,000 

417,000 
1,070,549 
2,100,000 
3,646,500 
3,050,500 
2,892,687 
2,968,070 

500,000 
1,492.000 



$18,801,141 



December 28th, 1883. 



J. R. DODGE, 

Statistician. 



In order to still more conclusively show that this world has been broken up and throwm 
together again — sometimes chaotically — and has been and is now constantly going 
through a process of formation and destruction, let me introduce the following article' 
from the Reading, Pa., Eagle, of Nov. 21st, 1879: 



Prehistoric Animal Liife. 

BY 0. A. GBEENE, M. D. 

The question is often asked, when was this world created, was it formed from new unused 
material by the fiat of God, or is it made up of the fragments of other worlds ? Every 
man, woman and child that has ever lived must think and our thoughts take singular 
views and conceptions sometimes. After having considered the above questions for 
many years, and read up the learned opinions of distinguished geologists and other 
men upon this subject, my conclusions are that this world has been in existence for mil- 
lions of years, and has been constantly undergoing a series of changes. To be more 
particular, there any quantity of facts which show that the earth is like the human body, 
all the time growing and decaying. Stalagmites and stalactites are forming in cavern* 
wherever they occur. Similar formations can be found under many arches or bridges 
made of stone ; anyone can see them in minature under any of the stone arches of the 
bridges used by the Reading railroad in this city. Petrified shells, fish and insects can 
be found in innumerable variety at Cincinnati, Ohio. Many of the streets are paved 
with lime stones made up almost entirely of fossil shells and encrinite stems. Millions 
of millions of fossil oceanic shells ar» Hound in the immense beds of rocks on both sides 
of the Ohio river for miles. Now, Cincinnati is many hundred miles from the Atlantic 
ocean, so there is abundant proof that this portion of Ohio was formerly the bed of an 
ocean during the countless ages that the oceanic fauna here and elsewhere found were 
being born into existence, aud afterwards ceasing to live were turned into stone. Thous- 



19 

«nds of years must have passed since these immeasurable deposits were petrified. Shells 
and fishes in the same fossil condition have been found hundreds of feet beneath the 
surface of the earth in deep sunk mines, o' when boring the artesian well. The fires of 
Etna and other volcanos have been for thousands of years burning up this terrestial ball, 
only 8,000 miles in diameter. The earth must be largely made up of carboniferous sub- 
stances to keep up for so long a time these conflagrations. The mind of man cannot 
even conceive of their magnitude. These never-ceasing fires must of course be seeking 
constantly for new elements to consume, and there can be no doubt that there must be 
a time in the future when the immense cavernous districts in the earth's body must (sub- 
ject to the laws of gravitation) bring about an almost universal collapse of the circum- 
ference, causing the destruction of thousands of cubic miles of the earth's substance, and 
which series of convulsions must change the character of the earth's surface. Just such 
changes have no doubt been going on for millions of years, and there can be no doubt 
that the unknown depths of the ocean were thus made deep through a continuation of these 
never-ceasing destructions, and as water thrown upon huge masses of burning materials 
causes unaccountable evaporations, and as such huge bodies of steam contain unlimited 
power, so when the oceanic waters are allowed to enter these large burning caverns earth- 
quakes must necessarily follow, being of greater or lesser magnitude, according to the vol - 
ume of water and the extent of burning territory. So as these convulsions are constantly 
liable to occur, and as disintegration and other forces and elements are also taking place, 
just as the elements of air are constantly being destroyed and re-formed, acting in con- 
cert with the immutable and wonderful laws of God, so it is undoubtedly true that the 
oceans of to-day may have been in the ages past the continents of the world, and the 
continents of to-day then oceanic bodies of water. As I've said, any quantity of facts can 
be adduced beside those mentioned in support of my theories, and I can in truth say 
that it is only a matter of time when a continuation of these destructive causes shall end 
in such upheavals that the inhabitants of the earth may be destroyed in one day. 

PROOFS. 

I will add one or more of well-known statistics to confirm my suggestions. 

in 1578 a vessel called "The Busse of Bridgewater," sailing under the auspices of 
Queen Elizabeth, of England, reached a very large island lying southeast of Friezeland, 
in latitude 573^, The vessel sailed for three days by its side. In after years this island 
was sought for, and it had utterly disappeared, no doubt from the effects of an earth- 
quake. 

ANOTHEB . 

In Mitchell county, N. C, for many years there has existed subterranean fires that 
have destroyed all verdure and trees on the land, and the earth is so hot that you cannot 
walk on it, and no one has ever been able to account for this phenomenon. 

ANOTHEB. 

At Summit Hill, near Mauch Chunk, Pa., a mine of coal has been burning for thirty 
years. 

ANOTHEB. 

In the vicinity of Charleston, S. C, on and near the Ashley river, there are billions of 
tons of teeth and bones of man, fish, quadrupeds and reptiles, all in a petrified condi- 
tion, and as they are composed largely of phosphate of lime the lands have been pur- 
chased by companies, who are digging them up and grinding them and selling them to 
the farmers for fertilizers. Over 100 square miles of territory are covered by these re- 
mains of prehistoric animals, birds and beasts. Bones of sharks are found that indicate 
the fish to have been a hundred feet in length. Now let your imagination for a few hours 
have full scope, re-embody all these innumerable evidences of life with their original forms. 
Try to conceive of the numerous caravans of land animals and reptiles, and then con- 
ceive of the vast extent of water that would be filled with the marine fishes of such huge 
proportions as they originally existed. Then let the imagination go further and attempt 
to conceive how it was possible to bring these untold millions of bones of the then living 
creatures into this vast space, and if your brain is not tired out before your vivid con- 
ceptions have taken a form of realization, then my mind and yours are dissimilar. Our 
lamented Agassis calls this vast burial ground "the greatest cemetery in the world." 

ANOTHEB. 

Over 200 years ago coal oil wa*:; found on top of the ground in Harlem, Germany, and 
this first knowledge of oil remained undeveloped way down to 1854. The Harlem oii was 
put up in small bottles and sold extensively as a lininaent under the name of "Medica- 
mentum." In 1820 the Seneca Indians of New York found a similar oil floating on the 
surface of Seneca lake, which they collected and used for the cure of diseases. Now 
since 1855 billions of barrels of oil have been taken from the bowels of the earth, and 



20 

thousands of the subterranean oil caverns have been emptied by the ingenuity of men,, 
and the products have been converted into illuminating and lubricating oils, anilines for 
coloring, fats like spermaceti called vaseline, cosmoline, and parrafine for candles, salves 
and other uses. Now, these vast numbers of vats of oil are the results of fires dur- 
ing the past ages, which have in the destruction of ligneous and carboniferous materials 
deposited them. 

When the terrestial fires shall have burned through the crust of earth which now sep- 
arates them from these innumerable deposits of inflammable oils, then will the magni- 
tude of the fires be greater and increasing until all the carboniferous deposits shall have 
been destroyed. 

Changes. 

Let me add one more evidence of the mutability of the earth's surface. Mr. John 
Fowler, for seven years the consulting engineer to the Egyptian government says that 
in an average year, the Nile conveys no less than 1,000,000,000,000 tons of water, and 
65,000,000 tons of silica, alumina, lime and other fertilizing soils, and substances down 
into the Mediteranean sea. 

Want of Fertilizers. 

Let me add another statistic to the very powerful ones in this essay. 

To a Pennsylvania farmer it seems almost incredible that in the State of South 
Carolina the average yield of corn is only eight bushels per acre. In North Carolina it 
is twelve bushels; in Georgia nine bushels; it is higher in Tennessee than any other 
Southern State, there running up to twenty bushels. In the Northern States, Kansas 
has the best record, her average yield being 363>^ bushels; Nebraska comes next with 
36 bushels. Pennsylvania makes the best showing of all the Middle States with an 
average of 28)^ bushels, closely followed by New Jersey with 28 bushels. There is plenty 
of room left for better farming all over the country. As the reader can easily understand 
it is just as expensive to till 40 acres of land in North Carolina and obtain 480 bushels 
as it would be if properly marled to get 1000 bushels, same labor except in getting in 
the crops, and that it is exceedingly unsatisfactory to till such poor land, and real 
pleasure, and profit to gather in from the same land 25 to 40 bushels per acre by simply 
applying the greensand marl. 

The Chemical Composition of Marl — Its Value as a Fertilizer. 

When the surface is removed from a deposit of marl and the spade reaches through 
the earth that covers the greensand, that formation is found with little moisture in it, 
uniform in color and appearance, of a dark green and slaty hue. The spade cuts it about 
as a knife passes through a cheese. The lumps or masses as thrown out cling together till 
they become dry, and then disintergrate and crumble, till a pile that has stood for a few 
weeks, and especially one that has been exposed through a winter is as fine and mellow 
nearly as an ash heap. At a short distance a marl pile has a pale green color, with 
whitish or greyish particles. Taking it up in the hand it gives no gritty feel between* 
the thumb and fingers. Its smell is somewhat that of clay, yet noways pungent nor at all 
disagreeable. One accustomed to the rank efiiuvium of the commercial fertilizers doubts 
whether there is much virtue in a mild looking, nearly inodorous earth. 

In all the earlier analyses of marl, the quantity of potash in the specimen was the chief 
thing sought. Professor Rodgers held that potash was its most valuable ingredient. The 
first chemist who published an analysis of marl that disclosed the presence of phosphoric 
acid was Dr. Enderline, a German experimenter, in New York city. He was a friend of 
Professor Mapes, and that enthusiast in agricultural science hailed the discovery with 
more joy than if ten per cent, of silver had been found in it. No discovery 
could be of more importance to the race than of an unlimited supply of phosphorus. We 
can flourish without silver. We can be rich and never see gold. But phosphorus means 
bread, and bread means strength and life and joy and hope and progress for the race. 
The Hebrew and Roman civilizations have left the regions bordering on the Mediterranean 
sterile and incapable of supporting a numerous and powerful race ; because their tillage 
has exhausted the phosphorus from the soil. England would be well on the way towards 
the tomb of States were it not that with a sagacity and enterprise worthy of all praise 
and of universal imitation she draws from other and distant islands and continents, from 
slaughter houses, from cities, and even from ancient battle fields, and from the tombs 
and crumbling mummies of old Nile, the phosphorus that next year waves in her generous 
harvests, and builds up the bones of her noble bullocks. Yet with all her vigilance and 
enterprise the fields of Great Britain are in a progressive state of exhaustion. "If it were 
possible," says Leibig, "to restore to the soil of England • and Scotland the phosphates 
which during the last fifty years have been carried to the sea by the Thames and the 
Clyde, it would be equivalent to manuring with millions of hundred weights of bones ; 



21 

and the produce of the land would be increased one-third or perhaps double itself in five 
to ten years. If a rich and cheap source of phosphate of lime and the alkaline phos- 
phates were open to England, there can be n ; question that the importation of foreign 
corn might be altogether dispensed with after a short time." As a rule, the more nutri- 
tious a grain or root the more phosphate it takes to grow it. The bean the pea, corn and 
wheat require it. A field without phosphorus is incapable of growing grain. No plant 
suitable for food can be profitably cultivated without the co-operation of this substance 
in some form. Hence, when it became fairly established by the analyses of Enderline, 
Prof. Cook, George J. Scattergood, R. C. Kendall, and others, that all the genuine green- 
sand marls contain from two and a half to three and a half pounds in a hundred of phos- 
phoric acid, this fertilizer began to arrest general attention, and the n\ost pertinent 
question a farmer can ask himself is whether he knows of any way in lohich he can get 
two or three pctmds of phosphate cheaper than by buying a bushel of good greensand 
marl? 

The following testimony of Professor George H. Cook as to the composition of the 
Jersey marls is probably of more importance than the researches of any other chemist. 
He is at once a chemist, a farmer, and a geologist. He has made the marl formation 
the study of years ; he has visited almost every locality in the State where marl is dug, 
and examined specimens from hundreds of pits : 

"While all other fertilizers are exhausted and the soils become poor, I have to see the 
first field that has ever been well marled that is now poor. One instance was found 
where poor and sandy land was ruarled more than thirty years ago, and has ever since 
been tilled without manure, and not well managed, which is still in good condition. 
Occasionally marled fields are seen that do not grow crops as large as they once did, 
but all their fertility is immediately restored by a dressing of lime ; an effect which 
could not have been produced by the lime on unmarled land." 

If you take a sandy loam that has never been fertilized, or a worn out clay soil, and 
^ive it a dressing of 20 loads to an acre, we have added about 1,500 pounds of potash, of 
Ijhosphoric acid 1,400 pounds, of lime 1,300 pounds, of magnesia 700 pounds. A bushel 
of greensand marl is worth 38 cents to the farmer for the soluble phosphoric acid it con- 
tains, and 16 cents for its potash, without considering the value of the lime, silex and 
iron. Eighty-eight dollars worth of marl at |3.20 a ton will purchase 1,925 pounds of 
phosphoric acid, besides as much more of potash of which therfe is very little in guano. 
Five hundred pounds of active fertilizers in a ton of fish guano costs $25; 146 pounds of 
active fertilizer in a ton of marl costs $8.20. 

Prices of Fertilizers. 

To give my readers a still better idea of the costs of the different compositions used 
I herewith attach an article cut out of the Wilmington, N. C, Review of Oct. 8th, 1883: 

Eebtilizebs, 13 2,000 lbs— Per Ton. 

Peruvian Guano, No. 1 - - - - - - $57 50@62 50 

" " No. 2 - - - - - - 36 00@37 00 

" " Lobos - - .... - 00 00@51 05 

Baugh's Phosphate - - - - - - - 00 00 @ 60 00 

Carolina Fertilizer - - - - - - - 45 00@50 00 

Ground Bone --.--.-- 00 00@40 00 

Bone Meal - - - - - - - - 00 00@45 00 

Bone Flour --..-- . . OO 00@57 00 

Navassa Guano --.-.--- 40 00@45 00 
Complete Manure .-.-.-. 00 00@.67 00 

Whann's Phosphate - - - - - - - 00 00 @ 70 00 

Wando Phosphate .-...-- 00 00 @, 70 00 

Berger & Butz's Phosphate - - - - - - 00 00 @ 60 00 

Excellenza Cotton Fertilizer - - - - - - 55 00 @ 60 00 

French's Carbonate of Lime - - - - - - 7 00@ 7 50 

French's Agricultural Lime - . - - - - 8 50 @ 9 00 

The last two articles are sold by one French, who resides only a few miles from Wil- 
mington, and who has on his farm a large deposit of a rock simulating very closely to 
common chalk. When the mineral carbonate of lime is deficent in the soil its addition 
in any shape will be advantageous. I will again repeat that the sale and manufacture of 
.artificial composits to apply to worn out soils has made a great advance in a decade of 
years, and the ingenuity of man has been wonderfully taxed to find the ingredients of a 
first class super phosphate. The bones of animals which for years have been bleaching 
uncaredfor on plains, praries and deserts, aie now being collected and sold to the above 
manufacturiesi Picking up the bones of dead buffaloes is one of the industries of 



22 

Texas. The bone mills in St. Louis pay fourteen dollars a ton for the best grades of this 
harvest gleaned by the squaws, who wander about the plains in search of the bleached 
skeletons. I saw hundreds of tons of bones at the works of the Navassa Guano Com- 
pany, four miles from Wilmington, K. C, some of them collected in Africa. 

"Wortli Investigating'. 

Responsible persons have told me that Samuel Butler, of Chester county, introduced,. 
in 1879, a bill to tag all bags of fertilizers with the analysis of each bag, to prevent 
fraud, and that it met with tremendous opposition from • the manufacturers of ar- 
tificial manures, and was referred back three times before passage. 

Lime as a Fertilizer. 

" Wherever agriculture has been advanced to the state of an art, universal ex]Derienc6' 
testifies that the presence of lime in a soil is useful. All plants contain naore or less 
of it. Although plants take from 93 to 99 per cent, of their growth from the air, yet 
iJie air afEords them no lime. This, in order to avail the growing crop, must be mingled 
with the soil. The plant can receive it from no other source As soils are formed from 
rocks, and as most rocks contain more or less lime, it follows that nearly all soils in their 
virgin state contain more or less lime, enough in most cases to bring good crops without 
the addition of more. The pioneer farmer, for a few years, seldom has occasion to 
apply it. Sandy soils, in which there is little or none, required it from the first. 
Olay soils sometimes contain none, and in this case the addition of lime is of great 
service. Felspar soils, and those derived from the disintegration of serpentine rocks, 
usually are destitute of this alkali, and consequently are barren till it is added. 

In soils long cultivated it is wanting, for the following reasons: A portion of the 
lime once in the soil has been carried off in the crops ; another portion has sunk too 
deeply in the soil to be reached by the roots of plants ; it is its nature, having 
a metallic basis, and being divided by the process of slacking into exceedingly minute 
particles, to sink between the coarser particles of earth to a depth at which it becomes 
unavailable. If, therefore, you long cultivate a field without liming it, you may well 
suspect that you have carried off half the lime originally in the soil, and that the other 
half has sunk beyond the reach of plant roots — though it is quite possible that you 
might avail yourself of this latter half by plowing four or five inches deeper than be- 
fore, thus turning the sunken lime up again to the surface. 

The objects to be sought by the application of lime are threefold: First, to feed grow- 
ing plants with as much as the constitution of each requires ; second, to change 
the condition of plant foods already in the soil, so that from being unavilable they may 
become available, and, third, to so modify the soil, physically and chemically, as to 
render it easier to cultivate and more productive." 

Plant Food in Plaster. 

Plaster consists of sulphate of lime, a (combination of sulphuric acid and lime), with, 
some water. Lime and sulphuric acid are both plant food, and so is sulphate of lime 
itself, which is sometimes found existing in the tissues of plants, especially clover. But 
plaster has an extraordinary effect upon some crops, as clover, peas, oats, corn and 
others, and much more than it could possibly exert by virtue of its component parts. 
This is evident when we find 100 pounds of plaster on an acre of clover sometimes in- 
creases the yield as much as 1,000 pounds of hay or even more. How this effect is pro- 
duced has not yet been explained satisfactorily, but it is a matter of valuable positive 
experience, and we can afford to wait for the explanation, if it is ever discovered. — New 
York News. 

Chemistry of Fertilizers. 

A celebrated French chemist named Ville, who has widely experimented, says in his 
l»ook on artificial manures, that " ten different organic and mineral elements enter into 
the composition of plants: phosphorus, sulphur, chlorine, silica, calcium, magnesia, po- 
tassram, sodium, iron, and possibly magnesium; but with the help of nitrogenous mat- 
ter, three only are necessary to increase and maintain the fertility of the soil, and the 
fanner need not concern himself about the other seven; and these three elements are 
phosphorus, calcium and potassium, and phosphoric acid, lime and potash are simply 
the oxides of these metalic elements. The other seven are in all soils in an inexhausti- 
ble proportion." 

Phosphate Rock in North Carolina. 

Through the kindness of the chemist, Mr. W. B. Philips, of Wilmington, N. C, (whom 
I had the pleasure of meeting in that city in October, 1883), I have before me a brief treat- 



ise on phosphate beds recently brought to light; and whicli discovery has produced a deal 
of excitement in that and adjoining states. The rock is found from five to ten feet be- 
low the top of the soil in Duplin county, in beds or layers of from eight to twelve inches 
thick, and contains twenty to forty per cent, of phosphates of lime. 

Now let me say again that in the undeveloped deposits in King William county there 
are millions of tons of phosphate rock in all shapes, and some of them are exceedingly 
rich in phosphoric acid, and that when this almost unknown manurial bed, now first 
brought prominently before the public, is fairly known and investigated, all others will 
gradually go out of the market. They cannot compete with us; the North Carolina's are 
difficult to obtain and inland away from railroads while ours are on a navigable river. 

Fossils. 

• ' I have on exhibition a few of the million of fossil and semi-fossil bones found on the 
banks of the Pamunkey. I have a portion of a mastodonic looking rib that I should 
think would if complete measure six feet in length, I picked up many smaller vertebras 
and bones, and showed them to the owners of the land where they were found who 
were utterly surprised. The truth is that the country there is very sparsley inhabited I 
rode miles without seeing a house, and men like Dr. Croxtin, Lewis and others who knew 
of the deposits, and had tested their wonderful fertilizing properties, had no ca,pital 
and were not in condition or had the disposition to form stock companies and work 
them. When after looking at my imperfect collection of these remains of pre-historic 
animals, birds, fish and of man, and imagine the untold millions of similar ones 
now in these unopened graves, the only present evidence of extinct life, of myr- 
iads of beings, once sporting in their respective elements, now dead and petrified, 
once full of life, vigor and joy, now unknown except as seen in these relics. When 
you try to conceive of the multitudes of these remains, scattered over and in this 
huge charnel bed you are soon filled with amazement, and surrounded with doubt, 
your littleness and supiness are the more evident to your feeble senses. These 
fossils represent billions of animals found over a territory of at least 200 square miles, 
animals and fishes, so large that the elephant by their side would be like pigmies 
teeth, tusks and bones of the cetacious family, vertebraae of elephants, of the Rhinoceros, 
mastodon, deer, horse, elk, hog, etc., mixed up with human bones, and tools of a race of 
men of whom we know but little. God only understands how, when and where destroyed, 
and brought together so promiscuously, and how so many millions of them are here 
congregated. 

Fossils Everywhere. 

Mr. John N. Emery, of New Castle, Pa., a brother of Senator Erne ry, kindly related 
to me to-day (Aug. 4th, '83) the following: In July, 1882, he was residing in Grain- 
field, Gore county, Kansas, and a well some 173 feet in depth gave out, and, as there was 
no other well or water near for many miles, the settlers were much annoyed, and he 
proposed descending the well, provided they could find a strong rope, which was done. 
At a depth of about 115 feet he noticed, by the light of his lantern, a stratum of blue 
shale and in it he saw a portion of the head of a fossil shark. He procured some of 
the teeth, one of them was two inches long, and the whole fish must have been 
at least 40 feet long. And he further states that f ossiliferus rocks are excessively abun- 
dant in the State, and in some places they saw out sections of them, and build houses 
from the blocks, which harden by exposure. 

China Fossils. 

The prehistoric remains of fishes, shells, etc., are very comnaon all through China, and 
the wisest of the race have been unable to explain their origin, they suppose them the 
work of their gods and devils. While boring an artesian well in Santa Clara valley Cal., 
the stump of a redwood tree was found 28 feet from the surface. In the valley tf the 
Connecticut river. 80 feet from the top of the quarry, immense tracks of gigantic birds 
are found. 

Fossils. * 

Insects and vegetable matter called infusoria are found in beds 20 to 30 feet deep at 
Richmond, Va., also in Germany, extending over hundreds of miles of territory. Prof. 
Baley estimates the number of seperate structures in a cubic inch of such earth in 
Maidston, Vt., at 15,625,000,000. Fossil shells are found in the Alps thousands of feet 
above the ocean level, also found on the Himalaya mountains 16,500 feet above the sea. 
Senator Emery owns an oil well (so I am informed) where they procured fossils from its 
bottom 700 feet deep. Fishermen on the English coast brought ashore in thirteen years 
2, 000 grindei s of mammoths, besides other fossil bones. Immense number of fossil 
bones have been found in Carrs, in Yorkshire, England. Dr. John C. Warren, of Boston, 



24 

bought, in 1830, the bones of a mammoth that weighed 2,000 pounds and was 25 feet 
long. Prof. Owens speaks in one of his books of having secured a fossil shark's tooth 
six inches long by five wide, and that the largest sharks now known to exist are about 37 
feet long, and have teeth two inches long and nearly two broad. The fossil tooth now 
in my hand is 83^ inches long and five inches wide, and must have belonged to a fish 
over 100 feet long. 

More Fossils, 

Col. Mantor, who for many years was located in this city, says that in the vicinity of 
his home there are lots of petrified beech and other nuts, and that in Cleveland, Ohio, an 
artesian well was bored 2200 feet deep, and at its greatest depth the drill brought up 
clay rock full of fossils. He also told me that at Fargo in Dacota territory, after boring 
585 feet they struck a three feet strata of fossilized shells. 

More Gigantic Fossils. 

The San Luis Obispo Tribune says. Most of the residents of this place are familiar 
with the large fossil shells found in this vicinity, but few have seen the enormous one 
brought here from Santa Margarita by Rev. Wm. Summers. It measures 163^ inches in 
length, 8 inches broad and 23 inches around the thicker part. It was found 978 feet above 
the level of the sea, some of them are found at altitudes of 2000 feet above the sea. 

Changes in the Earth's Structure. 

Since the creation of our mundane sphere there has been a continuous, never ceasing 
series of changes taking place, growth and decay. Carboniferous matter is now and 
ever has been constantly burning. This destruction of matter forms larger or smaller 
cavernous openings, and the destroying volcano is eating up all burnable material in its 
vicinity, and hence convulsions and earthquakes must necessarily occur. Recently a 
tremendous upheaval was discernible in Grand Traverseburg, Lake Michigan. It has 
been seen before. The horrible slaughter of men and women at Ischia is fresh in our 
naemories. Etna, Vesuvius and hundreds of other volcanoes never die out. Others 
remain quiet externally for years. The Yellowstone Park is full of volcanic upheavals. 
A country seat in Norway sunk into an abyss 300 feet deep in 1702, and the spot was 
instantly covered with water, drowning fourteen persons and 250 head of cattle. Geo- 
logical examination reveals in the delta of the Mississippi, along a space of 300 miles, 
ten distinct forests of buried trees. Bald cypresses with a diameter of twenty-five feet 
have been found. A geologist. Dr. Julien by name, has tried to tell the number of 
years that it takes each variety of stone exposed to atmospheric changes to be destroyed, 
and proves that many of them are ruined inside of 100 years. The island of Hawaii is 
entirely of volcanic origin, and it is 90 miles long. A volcano on the isle in 1852, in 
the space of twenty days, threw up a cone a mile round at the base and 400 feet high, 
and the flames threw up a column of fire 700 feet high. There are hundreds of extinct 
volcanoes on the Pacific coast. 

At Oxenhall, England, in 1179, the earth suddenly rose to an eminence resembling a^ 
mountain remaining so many hours; it then sank as suddenly with a deafening and 
terrific roar, leaving a deep chasm. 

The Gulen river in Norway buried itself underground in 1344, but soon after burst out 
and destroyed 300 persons, with several churches, houses, etc. 

On a Saturday evening, February 17, 1571, Marcley hill, near Hereford, England, be- 
gan to move from the base ; it continued in motion until the subsequent monday ; carried 
along with it trees, hedges and cattle; it overthrew a church, demolished everything in 
its way, and at last settled into a mount forty feet higl}, leaving a chasm forty feet deep 
in its path. In 1586 a similar phenomenon happened in Dorsetshire, England. A field 
of three acres, with trees, fences and cattle, moved from Blackmoor to Hearn and settled 
there. 

In 1618 the town of Pleurs, Italy, was buried by a slice of the Alps falling, and 2,200 
people were killed. A town near by was buried in like manner in the thirteenth cen- 
tury. 

Spearing for Timber. 

A new industry has recently been developed in Ireland — a sort of timber prospecting 
never dreamed of by our American pine hunters. It is a well known geological fact, 
says, the Northwestern Lumberman, that large tracts of what are now bog lands in Ireland 
were once covered with forests of oak and pine, and that in cutting peat, large trees 
of these varieties are found imbedded in the earth at depths of ten, twenty and thirty 
feet, in many cases whole groves being found standing just as they grew. To find out 
the location of these miniature subterranean forests is now the speculative work in which 
some industrious Irishmen are engaged. The timber, when brought to the surface, is 



25 

found to be perfectly sound, and the oak, which is as black as ebony, is used extensively 
for ornaments of jewelry and fancy cabinet work, and sells at high prices. A recent 
visitor to the wild moor and mountain region of Donegal thus describes the way in which 
the seekers after buried forests operate. Two men, armed with steel rods about thirty 
feet long, traverse the bog, and by running their rods into the ground are able to ascer- 
tain where the trees are to be found. They work by what may be termed natural math- 
ematics, and quickly determine the length of their prize, its approximate diameter, 
whether it is pine or oak, and is or is not a dumper — one of a company or clump. They 
fix on twenty or thirty feet square, and cross it with their searchers, say north and south, 
and then east and west, search it across each way, a stab to each foot or so, and in the 
course of a few minutes they know whether that area contains what they are looking for. 
The square lying next in d, next, and all near each other, are examined, and the discoveries, 
if any, marked for f.il ire action. The unproductive are also marked, to avoid future 
loss of labor. 

Mark Twain on Science. 

In his new book Mark Twain calculates : "The Mississippi, between Cairo and New 
Orleans, was 1,250 miles long 176 years ago. It was 1,180 after the cut-off of 1722. It 
was 1,040 after the American Bend cut-off. It has lost sixty-seven miles since. Conse- 
quently its length is only 973 miles at present. Now, if I wanted to be one of those 
ponderous scientific people, and 'let on' to prove what occurred in the remote past by 
what had occurred in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the far future 
by what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is here ! Geology never had such 
a chance, nor such exact data to argue from ! Nor 'development of species,' either ! Gla- 
cial epochs are great things : but they are vague — vague. Please observe : 

"In the space of 176 years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself 242 miles. This 
is an average of a trifle over one and a half miles a year. Therefore, any calm person, 
who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the old oolitic Silurian period, just 1,000,000 
years ago next November, the Mississippi river was upward of 1,300,000 miles long, and 
stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And, by the same token, any per 
son can see that 742 years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and 
three-quarter long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together 
and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and board of alderman. There 
is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture 
out of such a trifiing investment of fact." 

Singular. 

A tree standing perpendicularly has been discovered at a depth of 280 feet in boring 
an artesian well at San Bernardino, Cal. Great pieces of wood, which appear to be 
sj'camore, are brought up. 

Another Fact. 

In a petrified forest of 300 acres extent recently discovered in the Buckskin mountains 
on the Arizona side of the Colorado river, there are trees twenty inches in diameter, and 
not a leaf of vegetation which is not turned to stone. 

Shooting Stars. 

Another evidence that the earth is constantly undergoing changes which must in some 
measure disturb its equilibrium is in the fact that some astronomers have calculated that 
400,000,000 meteors of larger or smaller magnitude fall to, or are attracted to our earth 
every 24 hours. Some meteoric stones weigh 25 tons. 

Ancient Earthquakes in Ischia. 

The most ancient of the recorded eruptions in Ischia was that of Montagnone, to 
which is ascribed the origin of the vast crater of regular form that still existed before 
the recent earthquake, in a state of perfect preservation, in the northwestern part of 
Ischia. About 470 B. C, successive eruptions at Point Comacchia gave rise to the vast 
flow of Monecoco and Bale, which extended far into the sea and prolonged the point to 
the north. Numerous efforts have been made since these ancient times to plant colonies 
on this unstable land, even then fertile and covered with a luxuriant vegetation. 

Lyell, who made a long exploration of the island in 1828, relates that first the Erythreans 
and afterward the Chalcideans, who had settled on the island before the Christian era, 
were driven away by the incessant earthquakes and the mephitic exhalations escaping 
from every point. At a later time, 280 B. C, Hiero, king of Syracuse, tried to found a 
colony there, but it was soon driven away by a forminable explosion precedi^ -» the great 
flow of lava which gave rise to the masses now forming the promontories of Zarp and 
Camso. 



26 

The same fate befel the Grecian colonies which afterward tried at different times to 
oocnpy the island. The eruption that forced the retreat of the first Grecian colony gave 
rise to Monte Eosata, that cone of projections, the sudden formation of which is com- 
parable to that of Monte Nuovo. The last named mountain was raised in September, 
1538, in forty-eight hours, at Puzzraoli, after a succession of formidable shocks which 
occasioned great disasters in the Phlegrean fields and destroyed a great number of 
Boman buildings. These two mountains of volcanic erection, formed under similar con- 
ditions, at two distinct epochs corresponding in each case with a period of repose in 
Vesuvius, and distinguished by their regular form, which may be compared with that of 
the classic volcanoes of the chain of the Puys of Auvergne. Both, terminating in a vast 
crater, have emitted, like the volcanoes of Auvergne, only a single flow of lava, which 
seems to have exhausted all their energy. A long period of repose followed. During^ 
more than a century "Ischia the Joyous," as it was called, rested in perfect tranquility 
The pleasure-loving Romans made of it the most enchanting resort in the world; all their 
magnates had villas there .—Popular Science Monthly for November. 

I have given these various facts and statements merely to prove beyond any contro- 
versy that it is all irrational for any geologist to attempt to give dates for the different 
formations of the earth's crust or of its whole substance. These volcanic fires have been 
going on for thousands, may be millions, of years, and there is not (probably) a cubic 
mile of the earth that has not been disturbed, changed or disintergrated during these 
lapse of years, and hence any attempt to explain how the enormous quantity of marl and 
, fossil bones came together in Virginia is also foolish, and unwise. The whole matter is 
iuiexplicable. 

Navassa Guano Company. 

The extensive works of this very enterprising company is on the Cape Fear river, 
above Wilmington. Through the courtesy of its gentlemanly proprietors, I was taken 
to them in a steamer. They have certainly every variety of machinery necessary 
to break up and triturate the Nevassa rock obtained from an island near Hayti, as well 
as the South Carolina rock. The Nevassa rock like the South Carolina contains in its 
natural state from 10 to 47 per cent, of phosphate of lime. They manufacture on a huge 
scale their own sulphuric and muriatic acid, employ constantly an intelligent chemist by 
the name of Phillips, and they are making and selling a large quantity of these 
different grade fertilizers at from $34 to f 36 a ton at Wilmington, N. C. 

Acme Manufactviring- Company. 

Another organization is just being started at Wilmington, North Carolina, called by 
the above name, who are going to make a fertilizer from the South Carolina phosphate* 
rock, cotton seed and marl, with chemicals. Their works are located about 17 miles 
from the city at Cronly. Other organizations to make artificial fertilizers are starting 
up like mushrooms in almost every state. The demand for them is steadily increasing. 

Phosphates. 

While in Charleston, S. C, inspecting and investigating the methods of procuring the 
phosphate rock, I called upon Prof. C. U. Shepard, a distinguished chemist, who has for 
several years been in the employ of the State in the developement of the phosphate rocks 
found in its midst. He presented me with two works. The first being a report of the 
Commissioner of Agriculture of 1880, containing a very large amount of information on 
the methods of collecting, washing and preparing the rock, the number of companies 
engaged in obtaining it, &c., which I shall now briefly quote from. Before doing so, let 
me say that a gentleman named Mr. A. Butterfield showed me much respect in giving 
me all the information he could and also showing me some fine specimens of the fossil 
remains of elephants, mastodons, sharks, &c., found in the phosphate beds. Also, I am 
mxich indebted to Mr. C . A. Scanlan who showed me a very large collection of these 
fbssils and presented me with a handsome variety, as did Mr. Butterfield also. 

Hon. A. P. Butler, the commissioner of South Carolina, says : Over 100,000 tons of 
fertilizers, valued at $3,000,000, were made in South Carolina in 1879. The amount of 
phosphate rock mined and shipped in nine months was 53,000 tons, and that ten com- 
panies and five separate firms were engaged in the work, as separate companies and 
organizations, employing a large number of men and vessels, one company using 40 
flatboats in procuring the rock from the Steno river, and that the rock was found in 
marshy places over a large area of territory in varying veins averaging only eight 
inches thick. After being taken out of the earth by dredging and other methods, it 
was taken to large costly buildings, where it was broken up and washed, and after dry- 
ing was ready for shipment to the manufacturer, who then pulverized it finely and pre- 
pared it in various ways, by the aid of sulphuric and muriatic acids, for the farmers. 
When so prepared it sold where made for $25 to $35 a ton. Page 38 of this volume 



2t 

contains a letter from Col. W. P. Starke. He says the phosphate deposits an- supposed 
to underlie 250,000 acres; the accessible deposits comprise an area of about 10,000 acres. 
Edward Rvffin, in 1844, computed the wealth added to Virginia by the discovery of her 
itiarl deposits to be $500,000,000. 

Note.— Let me right here inform the reader that the declaration of Mr. Ruffin refers 
to the deposits which have now been secured by the writer on the Pamunkey. 

Prof. Shepard, page 68, says : The coast of South Carolina presents few elevations; 
V)ack for miles the land is low and swampy, andintheseswampy morasses the phosphate 
rock is found at greater or less depths, but usually within a few feet of the surface.. 
The average yield is about 750 tons to the acre. Owing to the level character of the 
country where the mining is done by excavating, steam pumps hare to be used to keep 
off the surplus water. Page 79, Prof. Shepard gives a fine engraving, showing the vast 
building used by the Charleston Mining Company for the purpose of washing the rock. 
Page 80 says: It is not unusual to observe the laborers diving into water six to ten feet 
in depth and bringing in their hands to the surface the phosphate rock. Page 81 : A 
very considerable part of the rock is excavated by dredging boats. Page 84: The total 
produ«tion to date of the rock is about 1,500,000 tons, worth, at $6 a ton, $9,000,000. 
Page 93 : The principal competitors of South Carolina phosphate rock in the world's 
markets are the Peruvian, Brazillian and rock guanos, fossil bones and coprolites, and 
phosphates of mineral origin. 

Great Britain imported, in 1844 to 1873, 1,250,000 tons, valued at over $3,000,000. The- 
British consul at Callao says, in 1873, that Peru did not then possess 3,000,000 tons of 
exportable guano. 

Without directly Quoting any further from above work let me say that throughout 
Europe there has been herculan efforts made to find phosphorus in some shape in the 
bowels of the earth, and that every variety of stone containing phosphate of 
lime has been sought for; and that accidentally (at first) a curious fossil, called copro- 
lite, was found and thousands of tons have been mined in England, Spain and 
elsewhere, which fossil is the petrified excrementitious remains of extinct animals, or 
partially digested substances which have been petrified, and that they vary in shape and 
size from a few ounces in weight to one or two pounds, and that three separate deposits 
of these curious substances were found in France, viz., the Boulogne, the Ardennes and 
the Bellegarde, and that the annual product of these beds were, in 1872, 25,000 tons. 
The cost to mine and grind them is about $10 a ton. 

In Germany is found a stone called phosphorite, wMch, although very valuable, is or 
has been very expensive to obtain. The same stone has been known for many years in 
Spain. 

In Canada a stone of similar character has been found called apatite; it is found asso- 
ciated with gneiss, feldspar, mica, etc., and when separated for use as a fertilizer is quite 
expensive, say from $10 to $15 a ton. It is found in Ottawa, Kingston and Perth. Dr. 
Sheppard presented me with a work entitled "Foreign Phosphates." Let me make a 
few quotations from it. The history of commercial manures is essentially that of the 
practical recognition of phosphoric acid. The use of bone and many clippings from the 
button factory of Shefileld, England, by neighboring farmers was probably the first appli- 
cation of purely phosphatic manures. This discovery was accidentally made about 1750. 
In 1774, Hunter first publicly advised the use of bones for manure. It was only through 
the experiments of the celebrated chemist, Justus Von Liebig, based on the researches of 
de Saussure and others, that phosphate of lime was thus recognized. A factory for grind- 
ing bones was put up in Hull, England, and the consumption of bones became enormous. 
Bones were sought for in all parts of the world, the result was, worn out land became 
again valuable, and the land advanced largely in price. In 1872 97,778 tons of bones 
worth over $30,000,000 were import«d into Great Britian. Then began searches for phos- 
phoric acid in some other shape, and the apatite (phosphate of lime) was found in Estre- 
madurs, Spain, and since that time the constant study of scientists has been to find this 
wonderful element to return to the mother earth in order to keep up a eupply of vegeta- 
ble matter for all mankind. And let me here interpose another sentence, viz: If all lands 
in the world were at once deprived of this ingredient, in a few decade of years the popu- 
ulation of this world would be dead, if there was no method of supplying this element. 
Hence the wonderful provision of God to furnish it to us from so many sources. 

The North Carolina Experiment Station sent me a pamphlet entitled, "Analysis and 
Valuations of Fertilizers," up to May 1883, introduced into their State, and I find over sixty 
different firms represented as manufacturers of artificial manures. To the uninitiated 
this will give an idea of how rapidly the demand is increasing for these artificial helps 
to the farmer, and what a large number of companies are now engaged in preparing 
them. Twenty-eight millions of our people are directly or indirect' y dependent upon 
the products of the farm. The value of our farms, according to the last census, was 



28 

$10,197,163,905. The yearly product is now nearly, if not quite, $4,000,000,000. The 
value of the grain crop of California for the last ten years was nearly double the value 
of the gold and silver taken from its mines during the period. We have more than 
.5,000,000, farms, and out of the $883,955,047 of our foreign exports, $729,560,016 were 
agricultural. 

Further Statistics. 

Eighty-five thousand tons of fertilizers were disposed of in this Ptate in 1881, at an 
average price of $30.80 for the acid phosphates, and $40.30 for the ammoniated phos- 
phates. The Rtate probably paid (so says the Agricultural Reports), $3,600,000 for the 
various fertilizers. 

Marl of New Jersey. 

I copy from N. J. State Reports of 1876, the following, page 173 : The importance 
of this natural fertilizer to the farming interest is so great etc. The state of the marl 
trade is much better. 

AMOUNTS SOLD IN 1878. TONS. 

Freehold and New York Railway Co. sold - - - - • - - 4,050 

Squankum Marl Co. - 7,500 

Squankum and Freehold Co. .--.-.-- 10,000 

Cream Ridge " " - - - - 4,710 

Pemberton " " ..-.-..- 10,000 

Vincentown " « ......... 3,01€ 

Fostertown " ----------- 5,500- 

Kirkwood " " - - 5,300 

West Jersey " ---------- 11,000 

Woodstown " " - - ,- 3,000 

Total ------------ 64,070 

All the above tons were carried on the railroads, and it is but a small part of the whole 
quantity they carted and used in the state. Mr. O. C. Herbert, U. Smock and C. H. 
Conover, sold to be carted away from their pits 19,564 tons. 

Certificates. 

Hundreds of declarations concerning the wonderful advantages of the N. J. marl have 
been printed in the state newspapers, and in their Agricultural Reports. Let me copy 
a few from a volumn before me entitled, "Greensand Marl of N. J." by I. B. Lyman, 
Agricultural editor of Hearth and Home, and from the pen of the State Geologist 
Prof. G. H. Cook. 

I. G. Shalt, of Jamesburg, N. J. says: I have used the marl for 28 years. When I com- 
menced my neighbors laughed at me. I used it on grass, potatoes and wheat. Its effects 
are astonishing. It gives a body to the land that no other fertilizer will. It is the 
cheapest. On buckwheat it has no equal. 

I. Higgins, of Dayton, N. J., says: I do not know what our farmers would do without 
it. Manufactured fei'tilizers cannot be compared to it. A field well covered with green- 
sand marl will last for years, while our fancy priced fertilizers have to be renewed every 
year. Marl costs me about one-eighth the price of guano. 

Henry Van Dyke, of Jamesburg, says: Marl has made my land, and more than doubled 
my crops; it is the cheapest fertilizer ever known, as the land seems to never loose its 
good effects. 

A. Redmond, of Jamesburg, says: The increase of rye and straw from the use of 125 
bushels of marl to the acre was marvellous. 

Hundreds of similar statistics could be here introduced. They only state the same 
facts over and again in different words. 

More Explicit. 

That I may not be misunderstood tqjon the matter, I will plainly say that I believe that 
the composition and comminution of substances in the greensand marl of Virginia must 
make it superior for fertilizing purposes to any marl ever before discovered or knoivn in 
'the world. 

Note. — From sixty to eighty bushels of shelled corn was taken from each acre of land 
that I saw on the banks of the Pamunkey, in August, 1883. Referred to in the pamphlet. 

Monied Inducements. 

The first question a business man asks is the following: Is there money in it?- I 
answer decidedly, Yes. Millions of dollars worth of marl are now quietly waiting to be 



29 

taken up and converted into untold wealth. There is no risk whatever. The competi- 
tion is very slight, not one per cent, of what it is in a coal mine. All tlie available land 
containing marl on the Pamunkey river is in our hands, with a few exceptions. We have 
millions of tons within a few miles of West Point, and fortunes can be made by 1,000 
stockholders, and beside the money made from the ready sale of the marl to hundreds 
and thousands of farmers who now want it, who can be easily reached by the thousands 
of flat and canal boats, lighters, sailing vessels and steamers, there is thousands of 
dollars to be easily made in the increased valuation of the company's lands. Large 
villages can be built up within a decade of years on and near the banks of the beautiful 
Pamunkey. The sale of lots will make all investors rich. On land now ov/ned in fee 
by the writer some twenty -five miles from the mouth of the river, I expect to see erected 
a»capacious hotel, say at Manquin, where thousands of Northerners who have never seen 
the beauties of the sunny South may stay for a day or a week and see the wild wood 
flowers. Steamers will run from West Point up the river every day. You can for less 
than $10 leave almost any of the cities of Philadelphia, New York, Boston or Baltimore 
and enjoy a delightful sail on the Atlantic ocean and Chespeake bay, up the York river 
to West Point, up the Pamunkey to, say Manquin, about 30 miles from West Point, stay 
over night, and return home. 

Vacant Lands. 

On each side of the Pamunkey are thousands of acres of land (many of them worn 
out) now only needing the marl to grow any crops. These lands can be bought very 
cheap. 

Some gentlemen interested in the Shenandoah Valley railroad thought they would try 
a little town building. They bought a number of farms at the point where their 
road.was to intersect the Norfolk and Western, and started a city which they called 
Koanoke. This was about five years ago. The city now has 8,000 inhabitants, shops, 
factories, long streets of stores, water-works, fine hotels, and is a marvel of rapid 
growth. The company has spent nearly f 1,000,000 in improvements, reserving from 
the sale of lots only enough to make interest dividends on their stock. They could 
close out what property they now have for four or five millions profit, but have no 
idea of doing so, as by selling gradually they will make much more. The profits on 
the city of Roanoke, which was considered a small speculation at first, if cashed at 
once, would nearly pay for the building of the Shenandoah Valley road. 

Fifty such towns can be built near the Pamunkey in the next twenty years. 

Clover. 

It is a singular and pleasing fact, that when the greensand marl of Virginia is applied 
to barren lands, after the first crops have been gathered in, clover almost universally 
makes its appearance. 

Super Phosphates. 

If after an organization is well under way, and agencies are properly established, and 
marl is being generally distributed to farmers throughout all the Atlantic States, the 
companies now making artificial manures still remain in existence, they must use up a 
large quantity of our marl as the basis of their fertilizers, to economize and approxi- 
mate to us in price of the compost. 

Now, I am ready to meet any gentlemen, singly or otherwise, and give further exposi- 
tions concerning the starting of a stock company to mine and sell the marl. I am pre- 
pared to answer any inquiries about the matter, and ready to go with a committee, who 
shall represent the stockholders, and see these lands. I have ninety -nine years lease for 
all the available river frontage, with a few exceptions. The first marl reached in going 
up the Pamunkey is ours by lease, with the privilege of purchase. 

Further information can be obtained by addressing 

DR. C. A. GREENE, 

Harrisburg, Pa. 

Note. 

My partner, Mr. William M. Stehley, who has for sixteen years been living on the 
banks of the Pamunkey, is now prepared to ship 10 or 500 tons of the greensand marl« 
to anyone who wishes it while I am organizing companies. His adress is. 

MR. WILLIAM M. STEHLEY, 
Manquin, King William county, Virginia. 



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